A federal judge in Michigan appointed by President Donald Trump delivered a setback to his administration on Tuesday, ruling that the state does not have to hand over its voter rolls to the federal government.
The decision, first highlighted by Politico legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney, comes as the Trump administration has filed more than two dozen lawsuits nationwide seeking access to voter data in states and cities across the country. The administration has repeatedly raised concerns about election integrity, echoed long-standing claims of voter fraud, and argued that stronger federal oversight of elections is necessary — even as the Constitution clearly assigns primary authority over elections to the states.
The ruling was issued by Chief U.S. District Judge Hala Y. Jarbou of the Western District of Michigan. Jarbou, who was appointed to the bench by Trump in September 2020, is a longtime member of the Federalist Society, according to archived biographical information from her time as a Michigan circuit court judge.
In a detailed 23-page opinion, Jarbou concluded that the federal government failed to show it was legally entitled to Michigan’s voter registration records under any of the statutes it cited. Those included the Help America Vote Act, the National Voter Registration Act, and the Civil Rights Act of 1960.
The defendants in the case included the state of Michigan, Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Michigan retirees advocacy group, and two individual Michigan residents who joined the lawsuit. Jarbou granted their motions to dismiss, finding that none of the laws relied upon by the Trump administration required Michigan to disclose its voter rolls.
Summarizing her conclusions, Jarbou wrote that the Help America Vote Act does not mandate disclosure of any records, the National Voter Registration Act does not require disclosure of voter registration lists because they are not records related to list maintenance procedures, and the Civil Rights Act does not require disclosure because voter registration lists are not documents that come into the possession of election officials as contemplated by the statute.
Addressing the administration’s HAVA claim, Jarbou said federal lawyers failed to allege any actual violations of the law. Instead, she wrote, the government appeared to be engaged in a fishing expedition, seeking records in hopes of uncovering evidence to support claims that had not yet been substantiated.
The NVRA argument fared no better. Jarbou cited extensive legal precedent allowing states to protect sensitive voter information from disclosure. She pointed to more than a dozen cases warning that forcing disclosure of personal voter data could discourage people from registering, conflict with other federal privacy protections, and undermine election security by exposing identifying information such as driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers.
She also noted that such disclosure could impose an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote under the First Amendment.
“A natural reading” of the NVRA, Jarbou wrote, suggests that states must disclose information about how they maintain voter rolls, but not the rolls themselves. She rejected the idea that Congress intended to make every voter’s sensitive personal information accessible to the public.
The judge also dismissed the administration’s claims under the Civil Rights Act, rejecting arguments that the law should be interpreted to cover modern computerized records. While acknowledging that her distinction might seem overly technical, Jarbou said it was Congress’s role — not the courts’ — to update statutes to reflect technological changes.
Quoting a book co-authored by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and legal scholar Bryan Garner, Jarbou emphasized that courts are not free to rewrite laws to fit circumstances Congress may not have anticipated decades later.
The ruling adds to the legal headwinds facing the administration’s broader effort to centralize control over election data, reinforcing the long-standing principle that states retain primary authority over their own election systems.
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