The Department of Justice sued Arizona and Connecticut Tuesday, expanding its unprecedented campaign to force states to turn over their unredacted voter rolls.
The two new lawsuits bring the DOJ’s tally to 23 states and Washington D.C.
“They’re going to have to put me in jail if they want this information,” Arizona’s top elections official told Democracy Docket hours before his state was sued.
Like all other ongoing DOJ cases, the lawsuit seeks a court order compelling election officials from each state to provide their full statewide voter registration list, including voters’ names, birthdates, residential addresses, driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers.
The Arizona lawsuit follows months of sparring between state officials and DOJ leadership.
Last week, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jesus A. Osete appeared to mock state concerns about accuracy and timelines, posting on social media: “Clean voter rolls. COB Monday. Thx.”
“They’re going to have to put me in jail if they want this information and have somebody else give it to them because I’m not going to do it. It would be illegal of me to release the information to the Department of Justice as they have requested it. Period. They’re asking me to break the law.” Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) told Democracy Docket founder Marc Elias in a podcast interview recorded Tuesday, hours before the lawsuit was filed. “It’s going to take a lot more than just a court order to get me to turn this stuff over. It’s going to be a knockdown drag out fight. I will not turn this data over as long as I am the Secretary of State here in Arizona”
In both complaints, the DOJ again invokes a “sweeping” interpretation of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 to argue that the attorney general has near-unreviewable authority to seize statewide voter rolls for “inspection, reproduction and copying.” The department claims the data is necessary to enforce federal voter roll maintenance laws, even as multiple states warn that producing the records would violate state privacy statutes and expose millions of voters to misuse.
Arizona and Connecticut are the latest jurisdictions swept into a nationwide legal offensive overseen by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who has asserted that the Justice Department has “sweeping” authority to inspect state election records. With the new filings, the federal government has now sued 23 states plus D.C., after many state officials refused to comply with its data demands.
State election officials across the political spectrum have pushed back, arguing that the DOJ lacks authority to compel production of unredacted voter rolls and warning that turning over such data threatens voter privacy and state sovereignty over elections.
“Why in the world would I just turn that over to a bunch of amateurs and a bunch of folks whose motives I can’t discern? I can’t trust. And I just am absolutely refusing,” Fontes added in the podcast interview. “I have warned our local election officials as well in writing, it is against the law for you to turn this data over to the federal government as well. So we’re doing everything we can to protect our voters, their information, and the integrity of our election systems from this invasive and unjustified Department of Justice request.”
Dhillon has repeatedly said the department will continue suing every state that does not comply.
Hours after the lawsuit was filed, Fontes rejected the DOJ’s framing outright, saying the department had ignored months of responses and refusals before heading to court. Fontes also said Arizona had complied with every lawful request, but drew a hard line when the DOJ demanded an agreement he said would force him to violate state and federal law.
“Apparently Mr. Jesus Osete, the number two guy in the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice, hasn’t been told that we have responded to every request that the Department of Justice has made. We’ve refused to sign the MOU that would ask me to break state and federal law,” Fontes said in a video directly responding to Osete. “I will say it to you directly, Mr. Jesus Osete at the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. Again, sir, pound sand.”
More lawsuits are expected as states continue to resist.
This story has been updated.