Judge tosses Trump administration suit seeking MD voter data

A federal judge threw out the Department of Justice’s lawsuit seeking data on millions of registered Maryland voters.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher marked another loss for the Trump administration, which has filed similar actions against more than two dozen other states. Judges in at least eight other states have dismissed the lawsuits; none have ordered elections officials to hand over the data.

Granting Maryland Elections Administrator Jared DeMarinis’ motion to dismiss the lawsuit, Gallagher wrote that she was not convinced by the Justice Department’s arguments that she said would require her to interpret the Civil Rights Act of 1960 “contrary to its text.”

“Accordingly, this Court joins every court to have addressed this issue in concluding that [the state’s voter registration list] is not a record or paper that a state must produce to the United States” under the Civil Rights Act, Gallagher wrote.

Gallagher, who was appointed by Donald Trump during his first presidency, handed down her opinion Thursday, five days before Maryland’s primary election.

The Trump administration had argued that the civil rights law’s provisions requiring the production of “all records and papers which come into [an election officer’s] possession relating to any application, registration, payment of poll tax, or other act requisite to voting” in a given election applied to the state’s voter registration list.

Gallagher found that the list, which contains addresses and driver’s license information “is not such a record or paper.” She found that the list does not “come into [officers’] possession” but is instead generated by the state. She also found that the federal government’s proposed interpretation of the Civil Rights Act would “criminalize” the alterations and updating of voter registration data that is required by National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act.

“This Court will not read [the statute] to produce such an absurd result,” she wrote.

Advocacy groups including Common Cause and Out for Justice, represented by attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, intervened in the case on behalf of DeMarinis. Joanne Antoine, Common Cause Maryland’s executive director, said in a statement that the ruling “is a massive victory for voter privacy and a rejection of federal overreach.”

“The decision ensures voters are protected from an unauthorized national database that would have been a goldmine for hackers and a tool for intimidation,” she said Monday.

The Justice Department did not return a request for comment. It was unclear as of Monday whether the Trump administration would appeal Gallagher’s ruling. The Justice Department has appealed all of the other voter registration data cases that were dismissed.

This story has been updated.