A federal judge on Friday dismissed the Justice Department’s lawsuit against Rhode Island, rejecting the administration’s bid to force the state to turn over unfettered access to its voter registration rolls, including unredacted records with Social Security numbers and dates of birth.
U.S. District Judge Mary S. McElroy said the demand amounted to a “fishing expedition” and ruled that the attorney general’s letter lacked a legally sufficient basis to meet the Civil Rights Act’s requirements. She wrote that the filing contained no factual allegations suggesting Rhode Island may have been violating the list-maintenance rules of the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act, and said that alone was enough to block judicial enforcement of the demand.
The ruling gives Rhode Island the fifth district court victory in the Trump administration’s voter-roll cases, joining California, Oregon, Michigan and Massachusetts. The Justice Department has sued 29 states and Washington, D.C., seeking records it says are needed to ensure compliance with the NVRA and HAVA, and 17 Republican-led states have complied with the demands.
McElroy is the second Trump appointee to rule against the department in these cases, deepening a record that now stands at five defeats, zero wins and 25 cases still pending. The government had asked the federal court in 13 states for permission to file new demand letters with a more explicit factual basis, but McElroy said even a later “curing elaboration letter” would not save Rhode Island because the purpose of the request still fell outside the Civil Rights Act’s intended scope.
The Rhode Island case was part of a broader push by the Trump administration to obtain unredacted voter-registration files from states. That fight has now run into repeated losses, and Friday’s ruling shows the department has not yet persuaded a federal court that the law lets it demand private voter data first and justify the request later.
