Former DOJ Employees: Request for State Voting Data Is 'Inconsistent' and Unjustified
Opposition to DOJ’s request for sensitive voter data from California was the subject of an amicus brief that a group of former department employees filed Monday in the government's case against the state. The summoning of voter data is “inconsistent with prior DOJ practice,” nor can it be “justified by any of the authorities” invoked, the coalition of ex-DOJ attorneys argued in their brief Monday.
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Though the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and the Civil Rights Act of 1960 are tools for the federal attorney general in legal matters, “that scope is not unlimited,” and in the case U.S. v. Shirley Weber “DOJ has overstepped its bounds by requesting “all fields” of the registration list for every voter in California,” the brief said.
Though the federal government claims the purpose of the requested data is to enforce the NVRA, that's “a stalking horse” for its real purpose of creating “a national voter roll” that can be used to “discover whether noncitizens or undocumented immigrants are registered to vote,” the brief added. “That purpose cannot justify the requests for sensitive data here.”
Given this, the coalition of former employees called on the U.S. District Court for Central California to dismiss the lawsuit.
Case 2:25-cv-09149 began in September when DOJ sued California to compel it to turn over sensitive data in the form of voter rolls to the federal government (see 2512010046). DOJ has sued several other states for the same reason (see 2512030049).
Various groups have joined the lawsuits in opposition to DOJ’s request, calling the federal government’s action unlawful (see 2512190063, 2512110005, 2512110050 and 2512020022).