Judge rejects DOJ reach for Minnesota voter data

Filed 1w ago · Via Courthouse News · The Buffoon Desk

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Scan by Yellow Lion · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons

A federal judge in Minnesota rejected the Trump administration's bid to obtain the state's unredacted voter registration data, ruling the government cannot demand broad access to records without first alleging a specific violation. U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez wrote that the government essentially wanted to use a lawsuit as a fishing expedition, seeking discovery before it had a claim.

The Justice Department sued Minnesota in September 2025 after Secretary of State Steve Simon's office declined to hand over its full voter list, arguing the feds cited no legitimate legal basis. The DOJ leaned on the Help America Vote Act, but Menendez found nothing in the act requiring disclosure of this kind, and no evidence the state failed to meet the law's list-maintenance requirements.

This marks the federal government's 23rd such loss nationwide, following identical defeats in states including Pennsylvania, New York, California and Michigan, with no better luck on appeal. Attorney General Todd Blanche has floated taking the fight to the Supreme Court, and the DOJ says it is weighing next steps.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Twenty-three losses is not a losing streak, it's a business model — file everywhere, lose everywhere, and eventually find a Supreme Court willing to call a fishing expedition due process. The administration's stated goal is restoring public trust in elections, achieved apparently by demanding data it has no legal right to and getting rebuked by judges of every appointing president. If the goal were actually catching noncitizen voters, one imagines they'd have found the specific violations rather than asking courts to waive that requirement two dozen times.

Source: Read the original at Courthouse News → Scored: Sergio's Magic Dustbin · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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