Vermont does not have to provide sensitive voter registration data to the Trump administration, a federal judge ruled Thursday, dismissing a lawsuit over the issue filed by the U.S. Department of Justice against Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont’s secretary of state.
The decision came a year after federal officials demanded Hanzas turn over the state’s voter rolls. Hanzas refused, expressing confidence in the legal basis for her decision and saying Vermont has a robust network of local officials who help keep voter registration up to date. In December, federal attorneys sued to force her hand.
In her decision rejecting federal officials’ claims, U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Lanthier said that her findings were “consistent with several other courts.”
The Trump administration has launched more than 30 such lawsuits seeking states’ voter rolls, which are part of an effort the president has said will root out electoral fraud and stop noncitizens from voting in federal and state elections. Federal judges have tossed more than 20 of those cases, with some still pending or on appeal, according to CBS News.
“The court made clear: The Trump Administration had no authority to demand access to the sensitive personal information of voters — including home addresses, dates of birth, and Social Security and driver’s license numbers,” said Hanzas and state Attorney General Charity Clark in a joint statement Thursday.
“Today’s ruling affirms our efforts to protect the privacy and voting rights of Vermonters from unlawful federal overreach,” the statement from Hanzas and Clark added.
U.S. officials are considering a further bid to force Vermont to produce its voter information.
“We are reviewing the decision and will likely appeal,” said Kiersten Pels, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice, in an email Thursday.
The Trump administration has appealed at least 20 such cases, and was denied in the only resolved proceeding.
Last month, amid a federal push to curtail mail-in voting, Hanzas and Gov. Phil Scott announced the state had removed nearly 900 wrongly registered people from its voter rolls. The error, they said, stemmed from data mistakenly shared with Hanzas’ office by Vermont’s Department of Motor Vehicles.
Theo Wells-Spackman is a Report for America corps member who reports for VTDigger. This story was first published by VTDigger and is republished with permission as part of the Vermont Journalism Trust’s Community News Sharing Project.