A judge on Monday dismissed the federal government’s attempt to obtain Oregon’s unredacted voter rolls, saying he had “great concerns” about the Trump administration’s motives to access the personal information.
U.S. District Judge Mustafa T. Kasubhai said a letter sent Saturday from U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz heightened his concerns. Bondi demanded the same private data from Minnesota voters on the same day the state was reeling from the second fatal shooting of a U.S. citizen by federal officers in Minneapolis.
Kasubhai made the ruling from the bench in a hastily called hearing by video, asking lawyers from each side to explain the “relevance” of Bondi’s letter.
Bondi urged Minnesota’s cooperation with the administration’s immigration enforcement operations and listed several conditions that would “restore the rule of law” in Minneapolis. She called on Minnesota to repeal its “sanctuary policies” and reach an agreement allowing ICE to “remove illegal aliens in custody of Minnesota’s prisons and jails.”
She also requested that the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division be given access to the state’s voter rolls and told the state to share its records on Medicaid and food and nutrition service programs so the federal government could investigate potential fraud.
An attorney representing Minnesota in a separate hearing there described Bondi’s letter as a “ransom note.”
Kasubhai said he previously hesitated to consider the administration’s motive in compelling Oregon to turn over highly sensitive personal information of current and former state voters, but Bondi’s letter prompted him to reconsider.
Oregon Senior Assistant Attorney General Thomas Castelli said Bondi’s letter undermined the federal government’s argument that it wanted Oregon’s voter rolls to verify whether the state has properly removed voters who had moved or died.
Instead, Castelli said, “it entirely appears to be involved in immigration enforcement.”
Attorney Branden Lewiston, representing Our Oregon, said he agreed that Bondi’s letter “confirmed some of the suspicions that we really had, regarding whether DOJ’s stated purpose is their true purpose.” The nonprofit labor union advocacy group intervened in the case.
James Thomas Tucker, a senior trial attorney in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, countered that the federal government wants the voter information to “evaluate the state’s compliance” with federal requirements to properly maintain lists of residents eligible to vote.
Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read, in an emailed statement Monday, called Bondi’s letter a “direct attempt to use federal enforcement and lawless chaos as leverage to gain access to election infrastructure.”
“This is an escalation in the Trump Administration’s ongoing attack on our democracy — and it should alarm every American. But I have one message for Pam Bondi: Don’t try this junk in Oregon,” Read said.
Kasubhai dismissed the administration’s suit against Oregon, saying the federal government had failed to adequately state a sufficient purpose, as required by the Civil Rights Act of 1960, for compelling the release of highly personal state voter information including full dates of birth, driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers.
Congress adopted the Civil Rights Act’s Title III to ensure voting rights laws protect against racial discrimination, the Eugene-based judge said, citing the Congressional Record.
Kasubhai ruled that the federal government made no suggestions in its demand letters to Oregon that indicated it was investigating voter rolls because of any allegations of discrimination.
He said a written ruling would follow.
The hearing followed more than six hours of oral arguments on Jan. 14 before Kasubhai, who said then that he was inclined to limit Trump officials to getting the same voter list that any member of the public can obtain for a fee, which does not include personal details.
Daniel J. Freeman, litigation director for the Democratic National Committee, was among those who listened to Monday’s hearing.
The committee sought a friend-of-the-court status in the case, and argued that the Justice Department’s true motive is to transfer personal identifying information and partisan affiliations of every registered voter to the Department of Homeland Security.
Homeland Security has broad authority over immigration, counterterrorism, emergency management but not voter registration, the committee argued in its brief.
Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield, in a social media post Monday night, praised the judge’s decision.
“The court dismissed this case because the federal government never met the legal standard to get these records,” he said. “Oregonians deserve to know that voting laws can’t be used as a backdoor to grab their personal information.”
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