White House chased by mounting pile of defeats as judge hands Trump another loss

U.S. President Donald Trump on Capitol Hill, the U.S. Capitol, in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 24, 2026. REUTERS/Annabelle Gordon

When a federal court blocked President Donald Trump’s efforts to obtain New Hampshire’s voter file Monday, the ruling marked a rare type of victory. The federal government had sued New Hampshire, and the state Attorney General’s Office had fought back and won.

But for the Trump administration, it was one of a mounting pile of defeats across the country.

Since returning to office for his second term, Trump has sought the voter registration records of all 50 states, arguing it is necessary to investigate the security of states’ voting systems. Some Republican-led states have voluntarily complied. But others — mostly Democratic-led — have refused, prompting a series of lawsuits by the U.S. Department of Justice against the states.

Now, 10 federal district courts and one circuit court have ruled against the federal efforts to seize the files. New Hampshire, the lone Republican-led state pushing back, is the latest to win.

To Will Hughes, staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union Voting Rights Project, the rulings indicate that the Trump administration has stepped beyond its legal authority in seeking the voter information.

“These district courts’ and the Sixth Circuit’s decisions recognize that states and localities have primary responsibility over election administration,” Hughes said in an interview. The ACLU has helped some states defend the lawsuits.

“These decisions,” he added, “show that the federal government has not met requirements that Congress clearly set out for accessing these records, that are replete with a lot of voter private information.”

A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

While federal lawyers have officially cited election-related reasons for obtaining the voting data, they have also raised the issue of immigration. At oral arguments during a lawsuit in Rhode Island, a Department of Justice attorney acknowledged the government planned to share the data with the Department of Homeland Security and use it to monitor citizenship status, according to the Rhode Island Current.

Private information

In the U.S. District Court of New Hampshire, Judge Joseph Laplante ruled Monday that federal lawyers had not established a sufficient basis in federal law to compel the Secretary of State’s Office to turn over the voter database.

The administration has argued that it needs the voter files in order to see if states are complying with their statutory requirements to maintain the files, to investigate potential violations, and to decide whether to bring civil action against the states.

But last year, Secretary of State Dave Scanlan, a Republican, refused the Trump administration’s written request for the voter files, pointing to a state law, RSA 654:31, that forbids its distribution to entities other than political committees and candidates. Scanlan noted that state law does allow a person or entity to request voter files town by town, but not the whole state list.

New Hampshire’s voter file has two tiers of information: a public tier, which includes a voter name, residential address, party affiliation, history of voting, and legislative district; and a confidential tier, which includes driver’s license numbers, partial Social Security numbers, dates of birth, telephone numbers, and email addresses. Only the information in the first tier can be released to candidates.

The Department of Justice sued New Hampshire in September to request all information in both tiers.

Months later, a group of citizens joined as “intervenors” to defend against the lawsuit, arguing their privacy would be breached if the Trump administration successfully obtained the voter file. That group included Christopher Cole, a Portsmouth attorney; Bob Perry, a former Democratic state representative; Neal Kurk, a former Republican state representative; and Louise Spencer, a progressive activist.

Spencer hailed the decision Tuesday.

“Our laws are designed to protect the privacy of voters, and it’s important for voters to feel that they don’t have to surrender their privacy to exercise their fundamental right to vote,” she said in an interview.

She added: “This just really felt like, you know, a nationwide effort by the DOJ to seize voter rolls without stating a clear basis in law to do that.”

A lack of ‘basis’

In the New Hampshire case and others, the Trump administration has argued two major federal laws require states to turn over the data: the Civil Rights Act of 1960 and the Help America Vote Act of 2002.

The Civil Rights Act allows the Department of Justice to inspect and copy state-held election records “relating to any application, registration, payment of poll tax, or other act requisite to voting in such election.” The law was passed in part to prevent states from hampering federal investigations into Jim Crow voter suppression policies by destroying documents.

But Laplante ruled that New Hampshire’s voter file, known as the statewide voter registration list, does not fall under the 1960 act’s list of documents in part because it is a constantly evolving document, not a static one. And even if it did, Laplante continued, the federal government is required to establish a “basis” for its investigation, such as an attempt to prevent poll taxes. The Department of Justice has not done so, Laplante ruled.

“The demand does not identify any factual anomalies in New Hampshire’s voter registration data,” Laplante wrote.

The federal government also argued it needed the voter information to investigate whether New Hampshire was complying with the Help America Vote Act. That act requires states to maintain an electronic list of every legally registered voter in the state and to regularly update the list.

For years, local supervisors of the checklists have updated New Hampshire’s voter file every 10 years; a law passed in 2025 now requires the list be reviewed every year. Voters who have moved out of the state, died, or not voted in the past five years must be removed from the list, though eligible residents can re-register.

The Department of Justice cited statistics indicating that New Hampshire removed a lower proportion of duplicate voters from its rolls than the national average. Laplante, however, held that those numbers did not constitute evidence that the state was mishandling its voter rolls.

That statistic, “without any other factual allegation or level of specificity, is not a sufficient factual basis to make out a claim that New Hampshire has substantively violated HAVA, particularly not one that … would allow the far-reaching discovery that the Attorney General seeks,” Laplante wrote, referring to Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche.

Likely appeal

The four individual intervenors brought different motivations for blocking the federal data seizure. Kurk, a long-time conservative privacy advocate who helped pass the state’s constitutional amendment to protect privacy, argued in favor of keeping voter information confidential.

Spencer, a co-founder of the political activist group the Kent Street Coalition, said she feared the list could be used to retaliate against left-leaning voters.

“Many of our volunteers are alarmed and concerned by the prospect of an overbearing federal government gaining access to their personal information,” Spencer wrote in a declaration filed with the court. She said Tuesday that she had intervened in the lawsuit in a personal capacity, and not on behalf of her organization.

Spencer and other residents argued they should be allowed to intervene in part to protect their interests as individuals if the state Attorney General’s Office struck a settlement with the federal government.

It is not clear whether the federal government plans to appeal the dismissal, though it has done so against the district court rulings in other states.

But Scanlan praised the court decision Monday, and said he was “committed to protecting the private information of New Hampshire voters to the fullest extent of the law.”

“Today’s court order affirms that I fulfilled that commitment by upholding New Hampshire law and safeguarding your private information from disclosure,” he said in a statement.

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