A federal judge on Friday shot down the Trump Justice Department’s attempt to get a look at Rhode Island’s voter lists, saying the feds were misusing a law meant to combat racial discrimination to try to clean up the registration rolls.
That makes the DOJ zero for 5 in judges’ rulings on its requests for states’ voter lists.
Judge Mary McElroy, a Trump appointee who has become a major legal opponent for the president, said the Civil Rights Act of 1960, which the DOJ was using to try to peek at the lists, was enacted to help the federal government combat Jim Crow practices that denied an individual’s right to vote.
She said pressuring states to rid their rolls of noncitizens, dead voters and those who have moved away doesn’t match that purpose.
Judge McElroy said that was not a “legally sufficient purpose” for the request.
The DOJ has seen similar losses in Oregon, California, Massachusetts and Michigan.
The only case where it has prevailed is in Oklahoma, where the state reached a settlement to turn over its data.
Roughly two dozen other cases are pending.
