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USA HERALD - On September 25, 2025, the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division announced federal lawsuits against six states — California, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania. At issue is each state’s refusal or failure to provide its statewide voter registration rolls when requested by the DOJ.

Attorney General Pamela Bondi was blunt: “Clean voter rolls are the foundation of free and fair elections. Every state has a responsibility to ensure that voter registration records are accurate, accessible, and secure — states that don’t fulfill that obligation will see this Department of Justice in court.”

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon echoed that point, saying the refusal of these states to comply undermines the integrity of elections. “Clean voter rolls protect American citizens from voting fraud and abuse, and restore their confidence that their states’ elections are conducted properly, with integrity, and in compliance with the law.”

Legal Foundation

These lawsuits are rooted in three statutes that Congress has entrusted to the DOJ:

• The National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) requires states to maintain accurate voter lists and make records of those maintenance activities available for inspection.
• The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) mandates that each state keep a single, uniform, official, centralized, and computerized statewide voter registration list.
• The Civil Rights Act of 1960 (CRA) empowers the Attorney General to demand election records — including voter registration rolls — for inspection and analysis.

The DOJ’s filings argue that each defendant state failed to comply with these mandates, and that the federal government has a right and duty to enforce compliance.

From a legal perspective, the DOJ is entering this fight from a position of strength. The statutory language of the NVRA, HAVA, and CRA is clear and has been repeatedly upheld by courts. States may argue that voter privacy concerns justify withholding full registration data, but federal courts have historically rejected those defenses when they conflict with explicit congressional mandates.

In short: the law sides with the DOJ.

That said, we should expect some of these states to fight hard, particularly California and New York, both of which have previously clashed with federal authorities on election transparency issues. Their legal teams may argue that disclosing the full rolls poses risks to voter security or violates state-level data privacy laws. But under supremacy principles, those defenses are unlikely to prevail.