Overview
- U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan issued a 78-page order Friday that enjoins the Justice Department’s effort to obtain non‑public state voter files and to audit them for alleged noncitizen registrants.
- The ruling covers voter files the DOJ already received and those it is still seeking and vacates a policy that the court said had led to citizen removals from rolls and risked disenfranchisement.
- DOJ had requested unredacted voter rolls from nearly every state and fully obtained files from about 18 states, which the department cross‑checked against the SAVE immigration database that courts and critics say produces false positives and stale records.
- Sooknanan found the department lacked statutory authority to compel state purges, cited violations of the Administrative Procedure Act and the Privacy Act, and emphasized that control over voter eligibility rests with the states.
- The decision comes as the Supreme Court has separately allowed states voluntary access to the expanded SAVE tool and as the NVRA 90‑day ban on systematic removals before federal elections limits immediate large‑scale purges, leaving further disputes to ongoing litigation.