The Justice Department filed lawsuits Friday against Colorado, Hawaii, Massachusetts, and Nevada for refusing to provide voter registration lists.
The department also sued Fulton County, Georgia, seeking records from the 2020 election. The legal actions expand the Trump administration’s nationwide enforcement effort to 18 states, marking an aggressive push to compel compliance with federal election laws before the administration ends.
“States have the statutory duty to preserve and protect their constituents from vote dilution,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “At this Department of Justice, we will not permit states to jeopardize the integrity and effectiveness of elections by refusing to abide by our federal elections laws.”
Dhillon added, “If states will not fulfill their duty to protect the integrity of the ballot, we will.”
The lawsuits invoke three federal statutes: the National Voter Registration Act, the Help America Vote Act, and the Civil Rights Act of 1960. These laws grant the Attorney General authority to demand and inspect statewide voter rolls.
According to the complaints, Congress enacted the NVRA and HAVA to ensure that states maintain proper voter registration programs. The Civil Rights Act provides additional enforcement powers for accessing registration data.
The Justice Department previously sued six states on December 2 for similar violations. Those states included Delaware, Maryland, New Mexico, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
In November, the department also targeted California’s redistricting plan in a separate lawsuit against Governor Gavin Newsom. That action challenged what federal officials called race-based district boundaries.
Friday’s announcement represents the third wave of voting-related litigation from the Civil Rights Division in recent months. The department filed its first round of voter roll lawsuits in September against California, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, and New Hampshire.
