April 17, 2026 — Washington
A federal judge on Friday rejected the Justice Department’s bid to force Rhode Island to turn over sensitive, unredacted voter information, handing another setback to the administration’s efforts to obtain state voter rolls.
U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy, a Trump appointee, granted Rhode Island officials’ motion to dismiss the DOJ lawsuit seeking the state’s full voter list, which includes names, birth dates, driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers. In a 14-page opinion, McElroy called the government’s request a “fishing expedition” outside the scope of federal election law and denied a motion to compel Secretary of State Gregg Amore to produce the records.
Amore praised the ruling, saying it confirms the Justice Department has no legal entitlement to Rhode Island’s private voter information. “Voter list maintenance is a responsibility entrusted to the states,” he said, arguing the executive branch had overreached and courts are upholding state authority and privacy protections.
The decision is the Justice Department’s fifth loss in its attempts to obtain state voter registration lists. Prior suits seeking similar data from California, Oregon, Michigan and Massachusetts were dismissed. The DOJ has filed actions against 30 states and the District of Columbia after officials declined to provide their voter rolls.
The administration has said it needs the data to verify compliance with the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which require states to keep accurate voter lists. Judge McElroy wrote that the complaint lacked factual allegations showing Rhode Island violated those statutes and said the Attorney General’s demand “does not plausibly relate to individual voting rights.”
The DOJ first sought Rhode Island’s voter list in September. Amore offered the agency a copy of the state’s publicly available list but refused to provide unredacted records, maintaining that the additional personal data are private and that the federal statutes cited do not authorize such broad access.
CBS News previously reported that the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security were nearing an arrangement to share state voter information so it could be screened against a DHS database for potential noncitizen registrants. A government lawyer later told the Rhode Island court there were plans to share the information for immigration and law enforcement uses.
President Trump has repeatedly claimed noncitizens are voting, though documented instances are rare and illegal. He has pushed legislation such as the SAVE America Act, which would require in-person proof of citizenship for federal voter registration and impose photo ID requirements; the House passed the measure in February, but it faces hurdles in the Senate. The president also issued an executive order demanding documentary proof of citizenship for registration, but key parts of that order have been blocked by courts.