The Trump administration’s pursuit of voter roll data from states across the nation, month after month, lawsuit after lawsuit, loss after loss, has an almost methodical quality. That record worsened on Wednesday. The Trump administration suffered its first appellate setback in a run of ten consecutive losses in federal courts when a federal appeals court decided that Michigan does not have to provide the Justice Department with the private information of its registered voters. It’s not just a momentous occasion for Michigan.
The first appeals court to comment on the administration’s attempts to acquire unredacted voter rolls from over two dozen states was the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit. That distinction is important. Despite their abundance, lower court decisions are not very significant as national precedent. An appellate ruling is not the same. The Sixth Circuit has jurisdiction over Kentucky as well, so Wednesday’s decision is now binding precedent there as well, virtually guaranteeing the dismissal of the DOJ’s ongoing voter roll lawsuit in that state.
Although the legal arguments surrounding the case are complex, the facts of the case are relatively simple. Jocelyn Benson, the secretary of state for Michigan, had consented to provide the public version of the state’s registered voter list, but she declined to proceed, claiming that the federal government lacked the legal right to request private, unredacted voter data. In September 2025, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit. In February, the case was dismissed by a district court. The DOJ filed an appeal. The district court was upheld by a three-judge appellate panel on Wednesday.
Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 served as the legal turning point. According to the original legislative history, this clause was intended to prevent Southern officials from destroying voting records that might demonstrate racial discrimination. In his majority opinion, Judge Andre Mathis contended that the DOJ was now trying to apply the same civil rights law in a different way. “Back then, the government used this power to ensure that everyone who had the right to vote could freely exercise that right,” Mathis said. “But today, the government invokes Title III for an inverse purpose — to ensure that some people have not voted.” It’s a line that gets right to the core of the disagreement.
Benson “did not acquire, obtain, or receive the qualified voter file from a third party — instead, Michigan officials created it themselves,” according to the 6th Circuit, which also determined that state-assembled and internally maintained voter registration files were not covered by the law. The administration appears to have underestimated this narrow but significant statutory reading when it filed its initial demand letters. The court also determined that the department had not complied with the statute’s own requirements, which require DOJ to inform states of the basis and purpose for requesting covered records.
Thirty states have been sued by the Trump administration for copies of their voter data. According to federal officials, the administration wants to use a Department of Homeland Security computer program to identify potential noncitizen voters. Election administrators have already criticized the SAVE system, pointing out that it frequently generates false positives, especially when naturalized citizens are flagged as possibly ineligible due to citizenship records that may be delayed in federal databases. That technical defect has a true human cost that the administration has not adequately addressed.
The Justice Department’s lawsuits against California, Oregon, Michigan, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Arizona, Wisconsin, Maine, and Maryland have now been dismissed on their merits by nine federal district courts, in that order. None of them has been won by the DOJ. The administration may have always believed that this route would result in the Supreme Court, where the legal environment appears to be more favorable. However, time is starting to play a role. Michigan’s primary absentee ballots have already been distributed, so even if the Supreme Court decides to take up the case, a decision that could be significantly implemented before the midterm elections in November is thought to be unlikely.
Following the decision, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel stated unequivocally, “The federal government continues to show a blatant disregard for voter privacy, but the rule of law has once again prevailed.” Observing the speed at which these cases have been dismissed, it’s difficult to avoid sensing a legally improvised rather than carefully planned campaign, with DOJ attorneys providing fluctuating justifications for their demands as courts continued to reject them. On the same day as the 6th Circuit’s decision, a federal judge in Massachusetts ruled that important parts of a Trump executive order on election regulations were unconstitutional and permanently blocked them. At the same time, the losses are mounting on several fronts.
It’s unclear what will happen next. The DOJ may file an appeal with the entire Sixth Circuit or take the matter all the way to the Supreme Court. In any case, the Michigan voter registration data appeal has produced a binding, published appellate precedent that other states and courts can now cite, something that the nine previous district court losses were unable to accomplish. That significantly alters the legal landscape. For the time being, every court that has considered this issue has reached the same conclusion; the Supreme Court may eventually resolve this.
