A federal judge tossed a Trump administration lawsuit Tuesday that had sought to force Colorado election officials to turn over unredacted copies of the state’s voter rolls.
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U.S. District Court Judge Philip A. Brimmer wrote that the voter rolls were not covered by the federal law that the Department of Justice was attempting to use to obtain them. He said accepting the Trump administration’s interpretation of that law would throw other election-related statutes into conflict.
He also pointed to other federal courts that have rejected such an argument; one of those other judges wrote that the federal government’s position would produce an “absurd result.”
Brimmer dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled.
The Justice Department filed the suit in December after repeatedly requesting copies of the voter rolls that would’ve included voters’ driver’s license numbers, birth dates and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers. The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office had provided the public version of the voter rolls, which withheld that personal information, but it declined to turn over the unredacted registry.
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“Today’s victory affirms that Trump’s DOJ has no right to Coloradans’ sensitive voter information,” Secretary of State Jena Griswold said in a statement.
According to Griswold’s office, Colorado was one of at least 30 states sued by the federal government for refusing to turn over their unredacted voter rolls. Twenty of those lawsuits, including the one filed against Colorado, have already failed.
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