A federal judge in Boston on Thursday dismissed a Trump administration lawsuit demanding the state’s top election official provide detailed data on Massachusetts’ registered voters.
Last summer, the U.S. Department of Justice asked Secretary of State William Gavin to turn over an electronic copy of the statewide voter registration list, including voter’s names, dates of birth, addresses, driver’s license numbers and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers.
Galvin declined, citing privacy concerns. The justice department sued in December.
According to the DOJ’s lawsuit, the demand for voter information was part of an investigation into Massachusetts’ compliance with election laws. Other states have faced similar lawsuits.
On Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Leo Sorokin dismissed the suit against Galvin, writing that the federal government’s demand fell short of legal requirements. Sorokin said federal officials “offered no basis” for why they were seeking the information, which left them out of compliance with the law.
“I am very pleased that the court has recognized that the Department of Justice’s demand for unfettered access to personal voter data was completely without any stated basis or purpose,” Galvin said in a statement. “Private voter information should never be the subject of a fishing expedition.”
Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell called the dismissal “a decisive win for Massachusetts voters and the rule of law.”
According to the Associated Press, the ruling is at least the fifth in which a federal judge has rejected similar attempts by the Justice Department. The Justice Department has sued at least 30 states and the District of Columbia to force release of the data, and 12 states have complied.
Last week, Campbell separately filed a lawsuit along with other states challenging President Donald Trump’s recent executive order that seeks to create a list of U.S. citizens eligible to vote and limit mail-in voting to the people only on that list.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts had argued in court filings that the justice department had not identified “any deficiencies or anomalies” in the state’s voter files and was seeking the data to facilitate “construction of an unauthorized national voter database that can be used to mass-challenge voters’ eligibility and contest election results in certain states.”
