The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Friday sued Virginia for not handing over state voter data, the latest among several states the department has targeted in an effort to retrieve registration information from individuals across the country since last year.
Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general to the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, shared screenshots of the lawsuit in a post on the social platform X.
“Virginia becomes the next state sued for ignoring federal law!” she wrote. “@TheJusticeDept means business — and @CivilRights will keep fighting to clean up voter rolls. Happy Friday!”
The DOJ has sued 14 other states for not complying with its request to produce documents that tabulate their respective statewide voter registration lists. In September, the department filed lawsuits against California, New York, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Maine and Oregon. The DOJ then sued Delaware, Maryland, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington in December.
Earlier this month, a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit against California. U.S. District Judge David O. Carter said the attempt to gather the personal information of voters would have a chilling effect on voter registration and impact future elections.
“There cannot be unbridled consolidation of all elections power in the executive (branch) without action from Congress,” Carter said. “This is antithetical to the promise of fair and free elections.”
The DOJ requested state election officials from 26 states to turn over voter information housed within registration rolls. Voter information can include birth dates, names, partial Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers. States that did not comply were in violation of the law, according to DOJ.
“Clean voter rolls are the foundation of free and fair elections,” Attorney General Pam Bondi previously said in a statement. “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.”
Bondi argued that the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act authorizes her to have access to state voter data. Her office added that she can use the Civil Rights Act at her “disposal to demand the production, inspection, and analysis of the statewide voter registration lists.”
Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon (D) previously said that federal law does not allow the state to hand over voter data to the DOJ “unless they provide information about how the information will be used and secured.”
“The DOJ remained silent – providing no information about how the data would be protected or used,” he said. “Instead, they chose to file a lawsuit.”
A spokesperson for New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver’s (D) office said it gave the DOJ public voter data before the lawsuit, The Associated Press reported.
Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs (D) also gave the DOJ publicly disclosable information, but said providing any additional information would violate the Civil Rights Act.
