A federal judge in New Jersey handed the Justice Department its eighteenth consecutive defeat in its nationwide push to inspect state voter rolls, dismissing the government’s lawsuit even as the state reels from the discovery that roughly 6,600 noncitizens were mistakenly registered to vote.
District Judge Zahid Quraishi, a Biden appointee, ruled Wednesday that the DOJ has no legal authority under the Civil Rights Act of 1960 to compel New Jersey to turn over its unredacted voter registration database. The dismissal came just one week after Gov. Mikie Sherrill admitted that a serious software error in the state’s Motor Vehicle System had placed thousands of noncitizens on the rolls, and days after reports surfaced that roughly 75,000 noncitizens had been summoned for jury duty through state databases.
The timing alone should give every New Jersey voter pause. The state concedes its voter rolls are contaminated. The federal government asks to see those rolls. And a federal judge says no.
Quraishi’s written opinion turned on a close reading of Title III of the Civil Rights Act. The DOJ argued that the statute grants federal authorities the right to inspect voter registration records. The judge disagreed, drawing a distinction between records that “come into” election officers’ possession and records the state itself creates.
In his ruling, Quraishi wrote:
“The plain text of Title III applies only to records ‘which come into’ election officers’ ‘possession’ and thus does not extend to New Jersey’s computerized VRL [voter registration list], a document the State itself created.”
New Jersey had withheld driver’s license numbers and the last four digits of Social Security numbers from the rolls it provided, citing privacy concerns. The DOJ wanted the unredacted data. Quraishi cited over a dozen similar rulings from other states in siding with the state.
The dismissal was with prejudice, meaning the DOJ cannot refile under the same legal theory. A DOJ spokesperson told reporters the department disagrees with the decision and will appeal immediately.
The New Jersey ruling is not an isolated setback. The Washington Examiner reported that the decision marks the DOJ’s eighteenth straight loss in its campaign to obtain unredacted voter rolls from states across the country. Earlier this year, the department sued Utah, Oklahoma, Kentucky, West Virginia, and New Jersey for access. A Trump-appointed federal judge previously tossed a similar DOJ lawsuit seeking Arizona voter data.
New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport framed the outcome as validation of state sovereignty over election records:
“Every court to consider the question, now totaling 17 district courts and a federal court of appeals, have unanimously rejected this clear federal overreach.”
That quote, reported by Newsmax, captures the legal consensus forming against the DOJ’s reading of Title III. Whether that consensus is correct as a matter of law remains an open question, one that may ultimately reach the appellate courts or higher.
The pattern of judicial resistance to federal voter roll access mirrors California’s fight against a federal voter roll audit, where state officials similarly pushed back against DOJ demands for full election records.
What makes the New Jersey ruling so striking is the backdrop against which it landed. Just last week, Gov. Sherrill acknowledged that a software failure in the state’s Motor Vehicle Commission had resulted in roughly 6,600 noncitizens being registered to vote. Of those, fewer than 400 cast ballots in at least one election.
Sherrill ordered an investigation after the error was discovered, and the state’s Division of Elections began removing ineligible voters from the rolls. An unnamed company providing identity-related security services denied any wrongdoing related to the registration error.
Then, this week, a second shoe dropped: multiple reports indicated that roughly 75,000 noncitizens had been summoned for jury duty through state databases, a number that dwarfs the voter registration figure and raises questions about how deeply noncitizen data is embedded in New Jersey’s government systems.
The RNC and the New Jersey Republican Party obtained a removal form used by a noncitizen on the state’s voter rolls to request to be unregistered. The form’s existence suggests at least some noncitizens became aware of their improper registration and tried to correct it, but how many others did not?
State Sen. Declan O’Scanlon characterized the motor voter scandal as potentially the “tip of the iceberg.” He called for New Jersey to halt its current automatic voter registration system, launch an independent investigation, and consider federal oversight. Those demands have taken on new urgency now that a federal judge has effectively locked the DOJ out of the state’s voter data.
The federal government’s interest in inspecting voter rolls exists precisely for situations like this, when a state admits its own systems failed and noncitizens ended up on the rolls. Courts have repeatedly blocked federal efforts to enforce citizenship verification in elections, and the New Jersey ruling extends that pattern into voter roll inspection.
The noncitizen registration mess is not a partisan talking point manufactured by Republicans. Sen. Andy Kim, a Democrat representing New Jersey, acknowledged the severity of the failure in blunt terms:
“In New Jersey, we absolutely need to have accountability for what happened. It was just horrible. There was a big problem with that computer problem that they had. We need to try to address that going forward.”
Kim’s statement is notable for what it concedes: the problem was real, it was serious, and accountability is needed. What it does not address is how accountability is supposed to happen when a federal judge has just barred the DOJ from examining the very records at issue.
The noncitizen registrations reportedly occurred between 2023 and 2024, spanning a period when New Jersey’s automatic voter registration system, linked to its motor vehicle operations, was processing applications without adequate safeguards against noncitizen enrollment. The specific software error that caused the failures has not been publicly detailed.
Several questions remain unanswered. Did any of the roughly 6,600 mistakenly registered noncitizens face legal consequences? What is the full scope of noncitizen data contamination in state databases, given the 75,000 jury duty summonses? And what were the outcomes of DOJ voter roll lawsuits against the other states, Utah, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and West Virginia?
The growing string of courtroom losses has not deterred the administration. Federal judges have extended blocks on other election-related executive orders as well, creating a widening gap between the administration’s election integrity agenda and what courts are willing to permit.
Judge Quraishi’s ruling rests on a defensible statutory reading. Title III was written in 1960, long before computerized voter registration lists existed. The argument that a state-created digital database falls outside a provision designed for physical records that “come into” an official’s possession is not frivolous.
But statutory interpretation does not exist in a vacuum. New Jersey just admitted that thousands of noncitizens were registered through a broken system. The state’s own governor called it a serious error. A sitting Democratic senator called it “horrible.” And the state’s response to a federal request for transparency was to invoke voter privacy, the privacy of a voter roll that the state itself concedes contains people who should never have been on it.
The DOJ’s legal theory may be flawed. But the underlying concern, that states are resisting federal scrutiny of voter rolls even when those rolls are demonstrably compromised, is not.
This is the same tension playing out in DOJ lawsuits across multiple policy areas, where federal enforcement runs into state resistance and judicial skepticism. The question is whether the legal framework will catch up to the reality on the ground, or whether states will continue to shield flawed systems behind procedural walls.
The DOJ has vowed to appeal. Given that seventeen district courts and one federal appeals court have already rejected the same legal argument, the path forward looks steep. But the administration’s persistence signals that it views voter roll access as a fight worth waging even through repeated losses, perhaps with an eye toward forcing the issue at the Supreme Court level.
Meanwhile, New Jersey faces its own reckoning. The Division of Elections is removing ineligible voters, but the state has not explained how the software failure went undetected long enough to register 6,600 noncitizens. It has not explained how 75,000 noncitizens ended up receiving jury duty summonses. And it has not addressed O’Scanlon’s call to shut down the automatic registration system until the mess is sorted out.
The state says it wants accountability. The federal government says it wants to help ensure it. And a federal judge says the law does not allow the feds through the door.
When a state admits its voter rolls are broken and then fights to keep the federal government from looking at them, the word for that is not “privacy.” It is a problem.
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