The Trump administration is making another legal bid to get the records of Arizona’s more than 4.3 million registered voters.
Harmeet Dhillon, who heads the civil rights division at the U.S. Department of Justice, filed the legal paperwork saying she is going to ask the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Susan Brnovich that the administration is not entitled to the records.
Dhillon, in Wednesday’s filing, did not say what she thinks that Brnovich got wrong. The basis for her arguments may have to wait weeks while she prepares the actual appeal.
But the administration could have an uphill fight.
Not only did Brnovich toss out the case, but she did it “with prejudice,” meaning the judge said there is nothing more that the Department of Justice could say that would change her mind. In fact, the judge said any further arguments “would be legally futile.”
Secretary of State Adrian Fontes — the person whom the Department of Justice sued to get access to the records — pointed that language up late Wednesday when he vowed to continue the fight at the appellate court.
“The DOJ’s announcement that it plans to appeal a federal judge’s ruling that barred them from accessing Arizona’s voter registration database today is nothing more than ongoing political theater and further damage to Arizona taxpayers,” he said in a prepared statement.
Fontes said the administration can have access to the public portions of the voter registration records, just like everyone else. That includes names, addresses, and party affiliation.
But Fontes said much the information demanded by the Department of Justice is protected by both federal and state privacy laws. That includes any part of a voter’s Social Security number, driver’s license number, mother’s maiden name, the state or county of birth, an email address, and signature.
In filing suit in January, Dhillon said her agency needs all that to determine if state officials were complying with laws that require they do “list maintenance” to keep voter registration rolls current and accurate.
In a 13-page order in April, Brnovich acknowledged that federal law does require states to preserve certain documents related to federal elections. And the law also empowers the Department of Justice, to demand that they be produced.
But Brnovich said there’s a flaw in that argument.
“Arizona’s state voter registration list is not a document subject to request by the attorney general,” the judge wrote.
Brnovich was no more impressed by a backup argument by the Trump administration.
Attorneys for the Department of Justice said that even if voter registration records aren’t specifically subject to disclosure, they are entitled to the information based on a broad definition in the Civil Rights Act which grants access to “all records and papers.” The judge, however, said that is a misreading of the law.
Brnovich’s ruling in some ways is not a surprise.
Arizona is one of more than two dozen states sued by the Department of Justice in its quest to obtain voter registration records. In every case that has been decided to date, a judge ruled in favor of state officials and against the administration.
Fontes has questioned the motives behind the lawsuit.
In his own legal filings, the secretary of state said it appears the real goal is that the federal government wants to amass a national centralized database on millions of Americans in what appears to be part of a plan to check the immigration status of those on the voter rolls.
There also is the fact that Trump himself publicly pressured Pam Bondi, who was the attorney general until she was ousted in April, to investigate his loss in the 2020 election, arguing there was cheating and fraud. Bondi has now been replaced on an interim replacement by Todd Blanche who had been her deputy attorney general.
