The Trump administration has extended its streak of court losses in its efforts to force states to hand over sensitive voter data.
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, Democratic lawmakers and voting rights activists welcomed Tuesday’s legal development, in which U.S. District Judge Susan Brnovich — appointed by President Donald Trump during his first term — dismissed the administration’s lawsuit that sought to get Fontes to provide information about Arizona voters.
In a joint statement, Fontes and Mayes said:
Today, Judge Susan Brnovich rightfully dismissed the Trump Administration’s lawsuit demanding Arizona hand over its statewide voter registration rolls to the federal government. That database contains the sensitive personal information of millions of Arizona voters — home addresses, dates of birth, and Social Security and driver’s license numbers. But the Court was clear: Title III of the Civil Rights Act does not authorize this demand. This is now the sixth federal court to reach the same conclusion. Arizona acted correctly in refusing this request, and today’s ruling vindicates that decision. Our offices will continue to defend the privacy of Arizona voters against federal overreach.
The Trump administration is now 0-6 in such lawsuits, having faced similar outcomes in California, Massachusetts, Michigan, Oregon and Rhode Island. Perhaps, the administration — to quote the president — has grown tired of “winning too much.”
Fontes released a video touting the decision and noting that Brnovich dismissed the suit with prejudice, effectively preventing the Trump administration from amending the lawsuit and refiling it.
He also released a hype video set to music, if that’s the vibe you’re after.
For those concerned about voter information landing in the hands of an administration that has promoted white supremacist propaganda and argued in favor of racial profiling before the Supreme Court, the dismissal is a welcome result — even if, as is almost certainly the case, it portends the Trump regime seeking other means to meddle with the electoral processes in Arizona and elsewhere.
Arizona Republicans have certainly been eager to aid the administration’s incursions. Warren Peterson, a Republican who is president of the state Senate and an attorney general candidate, recently asked Trump’s Justice Department to launch a criminal investigation into Mayes and Fontes. In addition, unearthed emails have revealed that Justin Heap, the top elections official in Maricopa County, has egged on federal officials’ efforts to investigate Arizona over debunked claims about the 2020 election.
Trump and his administration have sought sensitive voter information while promoting conspiracy theories about Democrats rigging elections and placing election deniers in top government positions. These machinations have come amid the president’s authoritarian push for the GOP to “take over” election processes in various parts of the country.
Several Republican-led states already have turned over sensitive voter data willfully, and the administration has fed some of the information into an error-prone database that is supposedly being used to determine voter eligibility (which, to be clear, is not the federal government’s job). But this latest court ruling in Arizona shows that some judges — though obviously not all — are still willing to thwart efforts to rig electoral processes in Trump and his party’s favor.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.