Judge tosses Trump administration lawsuit seeking Georgia voter data
A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice seeking to compel Georgia to hand over sensitive voter information. The ruling is the latest in a string of legal losses for the Trump administration as it seeks voter data ahead of the midterm elections.
U.S. District Court Judge Victoria Marie Calvert on Wednesday found that federal law doesn’t preempt Georgia’s voter privacy law. Calvert also ruled that the National Voter Registration and the Help America Vote Act do not require the state to disclose the sensitive voter data asked for by the administration.
The Trump administration has now lost more than two dozen of the 30 cases it filed against states that have refused to hand over unredacted voter rolls to the administration.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger welcomed the ruling.
“I will always protect the sensitive personal information of Georgians, in accordance with the law and the Constitution,” Raffensperger said in a statement. “I will not give in and break the law for anyone. Period.”
The secretary of state’s office previously told the Justice Department it has shared all of the voter information it could under state law.
In an editorial for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Raffensperger called sharing voters’ data with the Justice Department “reckless” and illegal.
The federal government has argued it needs the voter data to ensure compliance with federal election laws for maintaining voter rolls. Georgia and other states already do that. In 2025, Georgia canceled nearly 471,000 voter registrations, one of the largest removals of inactive voters in U.S. history.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Trump administration sued Raffensperger late last year for unredacted voter rolls, which include voters’ birth dates, driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers. The case was dismissed in January by a federal judge in Macon who said it had been filed in the wrong court. The Justice Department refiled in the Northern District of Georgia.
Some states have complied with the administration’s demands. More than a dozen states have provided or committed to handing over state voter rolls to the Justice Department.