US appeals court rejects Trump bid to force Michigan to hand over voter rolls

By Luc Cohen

June 24 (Reuters) – A U.S. appeals court on Wednesday upheld a court order blocking the Justice Department from obtaining Michigan’s voter rolls, dealing a blow to the Trump administration’s push to boost the federal government’s role in elections. 

With President Donald Trump’s Republicans locked in a tight battle to maintain control of both houses of Congress in the November 3 midterm elections, the Justice Department has filed lawsuits seeking to compel 30 states and the District of Columbia to hand over their voter lists. 

The administration has lost all nine cases decided at the trial court level. Wednesday’s 2-1 decision from a panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals marked the first appellate decision in any such case. Appeals are pending in three other circuits. 

The U.S. Constitution assigns individual states the responsibility of administering federal elections, though the federal government has some oversight authority. Trump, who maintains his false claim that his 2020 election loss was due to fraud, has long asserted that states are not doing enough to prevent ineligible people from casting ballots. He has said Republicans should “nationalize” and “take over” voting.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

STATES CITE VOTERS’ PRIVACY RIGHTS

The Justice Department argues it needs the unredacted lists to determine whether the states are doing enough to remove ineligible voters from their rolls.

Starting last year, the Justice Department sent letters to election officials in nearly all 50 states seeking access to their voter lists, including sensitive identifying information such as partial Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers and dates of birth. 

At least 17 Republican-led states voluntarily shared the data. Dozens more states, including several led by Republicans, have resisted, in many cases arguing that sharing the information would violate their citizens’ privacy rights.

Voting rights activists have expressed concern that the Trump administration is seeking to compare states’ voter rolls with other sources of data to purge people it believes are not citizens. They say that risks disenfranchising some voters because those data sources may not have up-to-date information on whether previously ineligible immigrants have since become naturalized citizens.  

DIFFERING INTERPRETATIONS OF CIVIL RIGHTS ACT

In the Michigan case, U.S. District Judge Hala Jarbou said the voter rolls were not among the documents that the federal government had the right to demand from states under the Civil Rights Act of 1960. The law, passed to combat racial discrimination at a time when Southern states were destroying Black Americans’ voter registration records to cover up disenfranchisement, requires states to preserve such records. 

U.S. Circuit Judges Andre Mathis and R. Guy Cole Jr. — who were appointed to the bench by Democratic presidents Joe Biden and Bill Clinton, respectively — affirmed Jarbou’s decision. Jarbou was appointed by Trump during his first term.

In a dissent, Circuit Judge John Nalbandian — a Trump appointee — argued the Civil Rights Act also required states to hand over some government-generated documents like voter lists in addition to materials submitted by voters themselves. 

(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Noeleen Walder, Bill Berkrot, Rod Nickel)

By Luc Cohen | Reuters | © Copyright Thomson Reuters 2026.