Seventh Circuit Upholds Wisconsin’s Special Exemption from Federal Voter Transparency Law – State Can Keep Charging Up to $12,500 and Redacting Birth Dates on Voter Rolls

A three-judge federal appeals panel handed Wisconsin election officials a major victory Wednesday, upholding the state’s special exemption from the National Voter Registration Act and leaving its costly voter-roll access system intact.

In a 27-page ruling, the Seventh Circuit affirmed the dismissal of an election-transparency lawsuit brought by the Public Interest Legal Foundation against Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe.

The ruling came from a panel composed entirely of Republican-appointed judges: Trump-appointed Chief Judge Michael Brennan, Reagan-appointed Judge Frank Easterbrook, and Bush-appointed Senior Judge Diane Sykes, who wrote the court’s opinion.

At issue was an extraordinary exemption written into the 1993 National Voter Registration Act.

The federal law does not apply to states that have continuously permitted same-day polling-place registration, or required no voter registration at all, since August 1, 1994.

Wisconsin qualifies because it has offered same-day registration throughout that period. North Dakota, Idaho, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Wyoming are also exempt.

The Public Interest Legal Foundation, an election-integrity watchdog, requested Wisconsin’s statewide voter-registration list in January 2024. The organization sought access under the NVRA, which ordinarily requires covered states to make records concerning voter-roll maintenance available for public inspection and copying at a reasonable cost.

But Wisconsin officials invoked the state’s exemption and processed the request under state law instead.

Wisconsin law permits election officials to redact voters’ protected birth information and charge for electronic voter records. The fee begins at $25 and increases based on the number of records requested until reaching an astonishing maximum of $12,500.

Because the statewide file contains millions of voter records, PILF was hit with the maximum price.

PILF challenged both the massive fee and the withheld birth information, arguing that Wisconsin’s exemption violated the constitutional principle of equal state sovereignty recognized by the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder.

The group also argued that the exemption failed the “congruence and proportionality” test governing certain laws enacted under the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Seventh Circuit rejected both arguments.

Judge Sykes wrote that Shelby County involved a federal law imposing extraordinary burdens on selected states based on decades-old information. Wisconsin’s exemption, she argued, does the opposite by relieving the state from federal regulation.

The exemption, the court concluded, “functions more like an equalizer,” while PILF’s requested outcome “would turn Shelby County on its head.”

PILF has repeatedly argued that the exemption no longer makes sense and that it shields election officials from the same public scrutiny required in the other 44 states.

Birth date information is particularly useful for identifying potential duplicates, deceased registrants, or other list maintenance problems. Charging the maximum $12,500 fee and withholding that data makes independent verification far more difficult.

In other words, the court ruled that Congress may continue treating Wisconsin differently from most of the country because the state adopted same-day polling-place registration before the federal government’s arbitrary 1994 cutoff date.

Chief Judge Brennan agreed with the outcome but wrote separately to raise an additional roadblock for PILF.

Brennan suggested the election watchdog “may lack standing three times over,” arguing that it had not sufficiently demonstrated that Wisconsin actually denied the requested information, that the alleged denial caused downstream harm, or that PILF could assert the claimed injuries on its own behalf.

He also stressed that PILF never paid the $12,500 fee and may have had alternative methods for obtaining at least some of the information under Wisconsin law.

The decision is another disappointing blow to citizens and election-integrity groups attempting to examine the voter-registration databases used to administer American elections.

As The Gateway Pundit previously reported, Wisconsin charges $12,500 for its statewide voter file while some jurisdictions provide comparable information free or for a modest reproduction fee.

That earlier reporting also raised concerns about hidden characters inside Wisconsin voter-identification numbers that can cause separate records to appear identical when processed with ordinary software.

The Gateway Pundit later reported that PILF had pursued litigation seeking voter-list maintenance reports generated through the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC. That report, citing Wisconsin audit materials, noted that the state requested only three of a possible 216 ERIC reports during its first four-and-a-half years in the organization.

The Seventh Circuit did not determine that Wisconsin’s voter rolls are accurate, that its redactions are necessary, or that charging $12,500 serves the public interest.

It simply ruled that Wisconsin’s decades-old federal exemption remains constitutional, allowing election officials to keep operating under a state system that forces watchdog groups to pay thousands of dollars before analyzing the database used to run Wisconsin’s elections.