A federal judge shut down the Justice Department’s attempt to get voter roll information from California, scolding the Trump administration for turning a pro-voting rights law into what he called an attempt to invade Americans’ privacy.
Attorney General Pam Bondi had sought the information under a 1960 civil rights law that seemed to give the feds broad power to obtain voting roll information.
But Judge David O. Carter, a Clinton appointee, said the law’s intention was to help the Justice Department combat Jim Crow voter suppression. He said the Trump administration offered no such justification for its attempt to gain the information in this instance.
“The Department of Justice seeks to use civil rights legislation which was enacted for an entirely different purpose to amass and retain an unprecedented amount of confidential voter data. This effort goes far beyond what Congress intended when it passed the underlying legislation,” the judge opined.
That decision is another legal victory for California, which has found itself tussling with President Trump over a number of issues in the courts.
The Justice Department has filed similar demands for data in more than 40 other states.
The data included names, addresses, partial Social Security numbers and voting history of those on the states’ rolls.
California said it would make its general voter list available, but without the driver’s license or Social Security information the feds wanted — and which would allow for data-matching to spot duplicate registrations or to track down potentially bogus registrations from deceased people or noncitizens.
Judge Carter repeatedly characterized the request as a major invasion of privacy and said it could scare “political minority groups” or “working-class immigrants” from registering or voting.
“There cannot be unbridled consolidation of all elections power in the Executive without action from Congress and public debate. This is antithetical to the promise of fair and free elections our country promises and the franchise that civil rights leaders fought and died for,” he said.
