Judge Block Trump Admin’s Attempt to Get Wisconsin Voter Data

Vote here sign. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

A federal judge on Thursday dashed the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) attempt to gain access to Wisconsin’s confidential voter data.

U.S. District Judge James D. Peterson dismissed with prejudice a lawsuit the DOJ brought against the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) seeking a complete, unredacted copy of the state’s voter registration records, which include sensitive voter data like Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers and voters’ dates of birth.

The government’s case failed because federal law did not support its central claim: that it is entitled to the state’s confidential voter data.

“The court has concluded that Title III does not even apply to the government’s request for Wisconsin’s voter registration list, so there is no way that it could amend its complaint to state a claim for relief,” Peterson wrote. “The government’s complaint will be dismissed with prejudice and without leave to amend.”

The case was brought by the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division and led by Brittany Bennett, a trial attorney in the division and a former Republican lawyer in prior election challenge cases. In 2024, Bennett filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Georgia Republican Party arguing the state’s voting machines weren’t secure in the run-up to the presidential election.

The federal government claimed it sought the data to investigate whether Wisconsin is complying with federal election laws. The Wisconsin Election Commission and other opponents of the lawsuit argued the federal government was actually on a fishing expedition looking for evidence of non-citizens voting in elections, a claim President Donald Trump has repeatedly made with no evidence.

The DOJ had also sought to involve itself in maintaining Wisconsin’s voter rolls, which federal law leaves to the states. Memos from the DOJ showed the agency sought to flag and remove voter registrations from Wisconsin’s rolls.

Milwaukee County-based Forward Latino joined the lawsuit, expressing concern that the federal government could use state voter datasets as a pretext for disenfranchising Latino voters and identifying citizens for denaturalization. The group pointed out that data included in the DOJ’s request may be incomplete or contradictory. For example, driver’s license registrations, which the DOJ seeks, are not automatically updated after someone attains citizenship.

“This ruling represents an important victory for every American who believes in fair, transparent and lawful elections, and in the fundamental principle that every eligible citizen’s vote deserves to be counted and protected,” said Darryl Morin, Forward Latino president.

It wasn’t just Wisconsin, either. The DOJ was seeking unredacted voter rolls in states across the country and filing lawsuits whenever states rebuffed their demands. Advocacy organizations that joined the lawsuit in Wisconsin, like Common Cause, charged the federal government was seeking to create a national voter database.

“Today’s ruling is a massive victory for voter privacy and a rejection of federal overreach,” Bianca Shaw, Common Cause’s Wisconsin State Director said in a statement Thursday. “The decision ensures voters are protected from an unauthorized national database that would have been a goldmine for hackers and a tool for intimidation. Our elections remain safe, secure, and in the hands of Wisconsinites where they belong.”