The Department of Justice has now lost 24 straight federal court rulings in its campaign to obtain state voter rolls, and the latest loss is the most instructive. Judge Mary Kay Lanthier of the U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont dismissed the government's lawsuit seeking Vermont's statewide voter registration list, adopting the state's argument that the statute the DOJ invoked simply does not authorize the demand. The ruling matters less for the score than for the method: it is the clearest statement yet of why a campaign built on Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 keeps failing on the same ground.
The Vermont case began with a letter. In 2025 the DOJ demanded an unredacted copy of the state's voter registration list, including names, addresses, dates of birth, driver's license numbers, and partial Social Security numbers. Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas refused, the DOJ sued in December, and Attorney General Charity Clark defended the state. At an April hearing the government conceded it had no evidence Vermont was failing to comply with federal voting law. On Thursday Judge Lanthier ruled that Title III does not authorize a demand for a complete, unredacted list and that the demand lacked any factual basis or lawful purpose.
What the 1960 statute actually authorizes
The statutory argument is the part that will echo. Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 requires election records to be retained and, upon written demand, disclosed for inspection. The DOJ has argued that the inspection right includes a right to a copy of the entire list. Vermont argued that inspection means inspection, and that the statute was written to allow federal review of records relevant to an investigation, not to compel states to hand over their complete voter files on request. Judge Lanthier accepted the narrower reading and noted that her ruling was consistent with other courts that have reached the same conclusion.
The scoreboard that is now the story
The score is worth stating plainly because it is now the case's most important fact. The administration has filed more than 30 lawsuits against states and the District of Columbia seeking voter rolls, and courts have dismissed 24 of them, with no wins on record. The losses span states of every political composition and courts of every level. The uniformity of the outcomes suggests the campaign is running into a fixed obstacle: the statute it rests on does not say what the department needs it to say, and judges keep reading it the same way.
There is a second layer to the Vermont ruling that is specific to this case. The judge found the demand lacked a factual basis, which goes beyond the statutory reading. The government's own admission that it had no evidence of noncompliance meant the lawsuit was not investigating anything. A records demand that follows from no investigation is not a records demand in the statutory sense. It is a fishing expedition, and courts have a name for that: no lawful purpose. The ruling treats the demand as invalid twice over, on the statute's text and on the facts behind it.
A 1960 audit power asked to do 2026 data acquisition
The statute itself is worth a closer look, because its age explains the recurring mismatch. Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 was enacted in an era when election records lived in paper ledgers in county offices, when inspection meant sending an examiner to look at the books. The provision requires retention and permits inspection upon written demand, language drafted for audits of specific records in specific places. The DOJ's 2026 reading, that the same words authorize demanding a complete, unredacted electronic copy of every voter's file, stretches a 1960 audit power into a modern data acquisition power. Courts have not been hostile to the department's goals so much as to that stretch. The Vermont ruling is the twenty-fourth time a judge has looked at the gap between the text and the demand and ruled the gap decisive.
The 0-for-24 record also has a strategic dimension that the individual rulings do not capture. A litigation campaign that loses consistently can still achieve effects outside the courtroom: the demands themselves impose compliance costs on state election offices, the litigation occupies their legal staffs during an election year, and the filings shape the public conversation about voter-list integrity. None of that shows up in a dismissal order. The states that have won these cases have paid for the wins in time and distraction, and the department's willingness to keep filing despite the record suggests the costs are being borne deliberately. Whether the campaign is meant to win cases or to raise the price of refusing, the record now functions as evidence in the political argument as much as in the legal one.
The privacy fight the rulings keep skipping
The privacy question runs through the whole litigation even though no court has had to reach it. The data Vermont was asked to hand over included partial Social Security numbers and driver's license numbers for every registered voter in the state. Vermont law treats the full list as protected information, and the state's refusal rested partly on its own privacy law. The federal rulings have so far been decided on statutory grounds, which means the privacy conflict between federal demands and state protections has not produced a definitive answer. The litigation has been ending one step before the question that would actually resolve whether the federal government can compel states to disclose voter files that state law shields.
The appeal that could finally settle the question
The department's response to the Vermont ruling indicates the campaign is not over. A spokesperson said the decision is under review and that an appeal is likely. That matters because the 0-for-24 record has been built at the district court level. An appeal of the Vermont ruling would put the Title III question before the Second Circuit, and a split among circuits would eventually force the Supreme Court to say what the statute means. The campaign's losses have been consistent, but consistency at the trial level is not the last word. The statute's meaning remains contestable until a higher court says otherwise.
What the campaign costs even when it loses
For the states, the litigation has settled into a routine. They answer the complaints, they win, and the department moves on to the next state. Vermont's own officials described the ruling as affirming the state's efforts to protect voter privacy and voting rights from what they called unlawful federal overreach. The pattern has become a defining feature of the pre-election legal landscape: federal demands for voter data, state refusals, and a growing line of judicial rejections. The scoreboard has become the story.
The election calendar gives the dispute urgency it would otherwise lack. Early voting is underway or beginning in several states, and the voter rolls are the operational backbone of every election office in the country. A ruling in September about who may possess the rolls is not academic. It shapes what data flows where in the final weeks before November. The Vermont dismissal keeps one state's list under state control, and it adds another precedent to the line of cases saying the federal government's inspection power has limits.
What the Vermont case shows, more than any of its predecessors, is that the campaign's weakness is structural rather than incidental. A statute drafted in 1960 to allow inspection of records during federal elections is being used in 2026 to demand entire voter files, and the mismatch shows in every ruling. The department keeps losing not because its lawyers are careless but because the law they are invoking does not stretch far enough to cover the demand they are making. Until a higher court stretches it, the score will keep mounting on the same side.
Primary sources
- VTDigger: Feds' lawsuit demanding Vermont voter data tossed by federal judge
- Democracy Docket: DOJ is 0-24 in its voter roll grab after Vermont demand rejected
- Seven Days VT: Judge Blocks Trump Administration's Demand for Vermont Voter Rolls
- VermontBiz: Vermont AG and Secretary of State applaud dismissal of DOJ's lawsuit demanding voter rolls