The Sixth Circuit voter rolls ruling, handed down by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, has affirmed a lower court’s dismissal of a Department of Justice lawsuit seeking unredacted voter registration data from Michigan, finding that the statutes invoked by the government do not authorise the demand.
The 2-1 opinion was written by Circuit Judge Andre Mathis, a Biden appointee. A second judge joined the majority; the third dissented.
How the Dispute Began
The DOJ’s push for Michigan voter data predates the formal litigation. In July 2025, the department sent Michigan a request for a copy of the state’s voter roll and a series of questions about voter registration practices, according to Votebeat. When Michigan declined to comply in full, the DOJ escalated.
On September 25, 2025, the government filed a 19-page complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan against the state and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. The complaint alleged violations of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), the Civil Rights Act of 1960, and the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). It sought not merely the public voter roll but fields including each registrant’s driver’s licence number or the last four digits of their Social Security number, as set out in Case 1:25-cv-01148, the government’s own filed complaint.
The DOJ cited several alleged irregularities in support of its claim, including lower-than-average voter removal rates and inadequate voter confirmation numbers, contending Michigan might not be in compliance with the NVRA, according to Courthouse News Service.
Benson refused to produce the unredacted file, and in October 2025 she issued a public video message alerting Michigan residents that the DOJ was seeking the private personal information of millions of voters, a step she characterised as unlawful, according to the Michigan Secretary of State’s office. Michigan filed a motion to dismiss in November 2025. The League of Women Voters of Michigan, the Michigan Alliance for Retired Americans, the Democratic National Committee, and others sought to intervene as defendants, according to the League of Women Voters.
In February 2026, Chief U.S. District Judge Hala Y. Jarbou, herself a Trump appointee, dismissed the case for failure to state a claim. Her ruling held that HAVA, the NVRA, and the Civil Rights Act of 1960 do not permit the United States to obtain the records sought.
The Sixth Circuit Voter Rolls Ruling: Statutory Text Governs
The Trump administration appealed and moved to expedite briefing. The Sixth Circuit has now upheld the dismissal, and the majority opinion does not soften its characterisation of the government’s purpose.
‘Congress enacted Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 to help end voting discrimination,’ the opinion opens. ‘Back then, the government used this power to ensure that everyone who had the right to vote could freely exercise that right. But today, the government invokes Title III for an inverse purpose, to ensure that some people have not voted.’
The court’s analysis turns on what Title III actually commands. The statute requires that covered records be made available for inspection, reproduction, and copying when the DOJ issues a written demand specifying the basis and purpose. The majority found the qualified voter file falls outside that requirement because the relevant statutory text covers records that have ‘come into’ the official’s possession, meaning records acquired from an outside source.
Michigan’s qualified voter file, which includes voters’ driver’s licence numbers, birth dates, and partial Social Security numbers, was created internally by state officials rather than received from a third party, according to Law.com. The majority used an analogy drawn from oral argument: a baker who purchases ingredients from a grocer has ‘come into’ possession of the ingredients, but has not ‘come into’ possession of the cakes she bakes from them. Michigan officials, similarly, created the voter file rather than receiving it. ‘Title III’s narrow text cannot withstand the weight of the government’s broad request,’ the majority concluded.
At oral argument, DOJ attorney David Goldman contended that the district court had ‘created a carve-out for state-generated records that has no basis in the act.’ Counsel from Elias Law Group LLP, representing intervening voters and the Michigan Alliance for Retired Americans, countered that the DOJ’s attempt ‘to exploit the Civil Rights Act for its current dragnet simply resembles trying to fit a square peg into a round hole,’ according to Bloomberg Law.
The ruling is the third time in 2026 a court has dismissed a Trump administration lawsuit in its pursuit of state voter roll data, according to NBC News. The DOJ has sued 25 jurisdictions in total for failing to hand over voter data. Subject to any onward appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States, the Michigan qualified voter file remains protected from disclosure under the government’s Title III theory, and the statutory question of what records ‘come into’ an official’s possession may yet require further judicial resolution across the remaining cases.
