Federal judge dismisses Trump administration’s lawsuit seeking New Jersey voter records

A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit from President Donald Trump’s administration that sought New Jersey’s unredacted voter files.

The case — one of more than two dozen lawsuits filed by the Trump administration against states ahead of the midterm election — predates New Jersey’s recent disclosure that thousands of noncitizens had been registered to vote in 2023 and 2024 due to a glitch in the motor vehicle system.

The Justice Department attempted to use that news as leverage in the case, but it was unsuccessful.

U.S. District Judge Zahid N. Quraishi ruled the department did not have the authority to compel New Jersey to hand over its unredacted records.

“The Constitution’s architects chose to delegate election administration to the states, recognizing local governments have the deepest understanding of their constituents’ circumstances,” Quraishi wrote in the ruling, which granted New Jersey’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

Quraishi has become the 18th U.S. District Court judge to rule against the Trump administration on the issue, according to data from the Brennan Center for Justice.

The Trump administration will likely appeal the case, as the president and his allies have made election security a focal point ahead of the November midterms. It is mounting an appeal in a similar case in Pennsylvania.

The ruling in the state’s favor came a day after New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill formally told the Justice Department she would not release personal information about noncitizen voters who had been mistakenly added to the state’s voter rolls ahead of the 2024 election.

Sherrill announced last week that about 6,600 noncitizens had been registered to vote due to a glitch in the automatic voter registration system at the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission. She said fewer than 400 had cast ballots and there was no evidence they had affected election results.

On Tuesday, she said the New Jersey Department of State had begun removing 4,500 voters from the rolls. But there is a chance the rest could actually be citizens, so counties will review those about 2,000 individuals to ensure no eligible voters are disenfranchised, she said.

Following Sherrill’s disclosure last week, Assistant U.S. Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon requested the full names, dates of birth, nationalities, and home addresses of the individuals who were erroneously registered, as well as additional information about the noncitizens who voted, within a week.

Sherrill had publicly indicated she would not hand over the data, but her letter Tuesday put it on the books.

The Justice Department’s request has no legal basis, Sherrill said in a Tuesday letter to Dhillon, and sharing “extensive personal information about thousands of New Jersey residents” is limited by state and federal privacy laws.

“Here and always, I remain committed to protecting New Jerseyans’ personally identifying information,” Sherrill wrote, reiterating her stance from the previous week, when she cited concerns about federal data breaches under Trump.

In response to Sherrill’s rebuffing, Dhillon said the Justice Department’s request was rooted in the legal authority to “keep ineligible voters off its rolls” and vowed to obtain the information “through all legal means!”

Sherrill’s “refusal to cooperate with federal law enforcement does nothing to protect law-abiding NJ voters,” Dhillon said on X.

Sherrill on Tuesday criticized the Trump administration for “weaponizing the government against individuals that disagree with them.”

She pointed to an issue during her campaign last year in which the federal government provided personal information about her that should have been redacted, like her Social Security number, to an ally of her Republican opponent. The National Personnel Records Center director apologized at the time and called it a rare error, but Sherrill claims her data were “weaponized” against her.

Sherrill has not shied away from the issue of voter access in New Jersey as it becomes a national talking point in the debate over election security after last week’s revelation that thousands of people had been improperly added to the voter rolls when applying for driver’s licenses and identification cards.

On Tuesday, she championed a new law, the John R. Lewis Voter Empowerment Act, that offers a slew of policies meant to increase voter participation.

The erroneous registrations took place between June 2023 and June 2024 under former Gov. Phil Murphy’s administration due to a software glitch in New Jersey’s motor vehicle system, which processes the automatic registration when citizens obtain an ID or a license unless they decline.

Even though they checked “no” when asked if they were a U.S. citizen, the noncitizens were registered anyway.

Sherrill pointed a finger at her predecessor but a spokesperson for Murphy said the former governor had “no knowledge” of the glitch.

U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a South Jersey Republican, said he planned to hold hearings over the issue and called on Sherrill to answer a slate of questions.

Sherrill said Tuesday that her administration had hired a law firm to conduct an independent bipartisan investigation. One of the firm’s main partners worked under former Republican Gov. Chris Christie as attorney general and was later appointed by Christie to the Senate, she noted, saying “we have nothing to hide.”

Christie said in a post on X that Sherrill “made the right choice tapping my former AG Jeff Chiesa to lead the independent investigation into New Jersey’s voter rolls.”

“Jeff won’t hide anything from the public,” he said. “You can count on it.”

But the New Jersey GOP questioned Wednesday why Sherrill would not comply with the Justice Department if she “has nothing to hide.”

“She ran on transparency and accountability,” the party said in a post online. “Apparently, those were campaign promises that expired the moment she was sworn in.”

Republicans have seized on the noncitizen voter registrations to make the case for the SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship like a passport or birth certificate to register to vote.