Judge Dismisses DOJ Suit for Utah's Full Voter Rolls: Trump-Appointed Judge Rules Statewide List Falls Outside Civil Rights Act
Salt Lake City, Utah — U.S. District Judge David Barlow on Friday, October 23, denied the Justice Department's motion to compel and dismissed with prejudice its lawsuit seeking Utah's complete voter registration database, ruling in a memorandum decision that the state's statewide voter list is not a record that "comes into" an election official's possession under Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960. The case is United States v. Henderson, No. 2:26-cv-00166, in the District of Utah.
The department sought the full, unredacted statewide voter file from Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, a Republican who serves as Utah's chief election officer, including voters' full dates of birth, driver's license numbers and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers. Henderson had provided the publicly available version of the file but withheld protected information, citing state privacy law. The department said it needed the records to assess Utah's compliance with federal voter registration laws. It sued in February after Henderson declined to sign a proposed data-sharing agreement, and in September it notified her that she was under investigation over election-law compliance. Henderson accused the department of baselessly harassing election officials; the department said its preservation letters were standard litigation practice.
Barlow wrote that Utah's statewide list is developed, managed and maintained by Henderson's office itself rather than received from elsewhere. "An ordinary English speaker would not say that she has come into possession of something that she created, established, and maintained," he wrote, adopting reasoning the Sixth Circuit used in rejecting a similar suit over Michigan's rolls. Courts have "no warrant to elevate vague invocations of statutory purpose over the words Congress chose," he added, noting that Title III was enacted amid widespread racial discrimination in voter registration to combat voter suppression. He granted the dismissal motions filed by Henderson, the NAACP and the League of Women Voters of Utah and found that allowing the department to amend its complaint would be futile. The ruling made no finding that voter fraud occurred in Utah and did not decide the state's separate privacy-law arguments.
"We appreciate Judge Barlow's ruling dismissing the Department of Justice's lawsuit that sought to force us to disclose the private data of every Utah voter," Henderson said in a statement. "Our office will continue to uphold the rule of law and safeguard the fundamental right to free, fair, and secure elections for the people of Utah." The Justice Department did not immediately respond to KSL's request for comment and has not said whether it will appeal, KSL reported.
The decision adds to a string of defeats for the department's nationwide push for unredacted state voter rolls. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, the department has sued 30 states and Washington, D.C., and courts had dismissed 26 of those cases before Friday's Utah ruling, including suits against California, Arizona, Michigan, Oregon and Washington; Democracy Docket counts the Utah decision as the department's 27th consecutive loss in the series. Barlow was nominated to the federal bench by President Donald Trump in 2019. The ruling came a day after the department told Henderson it would send federal election monitors to Utah for the November midterms.
Related: Judge rejects DOJ suit for Georgia's unredacted voter data
Related: Federal judge halts DOJ's national voter-roll purge effort
Related: DOJ to send federal election monitors to Utah
Source: GSM · USA
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：位于 Salt Lake City 的犹他州议会大厦（资料图）。Farragutful 摄，CC BY-SA 4.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / The Utah State Capitol in Salt Lake City (file photo). Photo by Farragutful, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
- 2026-10-01Judge Dismisses DOJ Lawsuit Seeking Unredacted Georgia Voter Data
- 2026-10-11Federal Judge Vacates DOJ's Nationwide Voter-Roll Dragnet, Citing Risk of Disenfranchising U.S. Citizens
- 2026-10-18DOJ Asks Court to Stay Voter-Roll Ruling Pending Appeal, Saying the Vacated "Policy" Does Not Exist
- 2026-10-25Judge Dismisses DOJ Suit for Utah's Full Voter Rolls: Trump-Appointed Judge Rules Statewide List Falls Outside Civil Rights ActThis story
