The U.S. Department of Justice says it’s going to appeal a ruling about demands for unredacted West Virginia voter registration data.
Lawyers for the justice department this week filed a notice of appeal to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is the multi-state district that includes West Virginia.
The actual appeal has not yet been filed. The 4th Circuit will docket the case, put in a briefing order and then the DOJ’s main argument would be due within 40 days or so.
So the grounds for DOJ’s argument are not yet clear.
The U.S. Department of Justice has lost 23 district court cases and won none in its nationwide lawsuits seeking unredacted state voter rolls.
In June, DOJ also lost a case at the appellate level. A three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court ruling dismissing a lawsuit against Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson.
In West Virginia, U.S. District Judge Thomas Johnston, a George W. Bush appointee, entered an order in July to dismiss DOJ’s demands for unredacted voter data. That’s the order DOJ intends to appeal.
As in other states, the Department of Justice was asking the federal court to compel West Virginia officials to release the list that would include state voters’ information like birth dates, residential addresses, drivers license numbers and partial Social Security numbers.
The Department of Justice sought unredacted voter data under the Civil Rights Act of 1960, claiming a need to monitor state compliance with federal election laws.
The requested information includes full names, residential addresses, dates of birth, driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers.
West Virginia’s Secretary of State, Republican Kris Warner, had asked the federal judge to toss the case.
The state argued that the request is legally deficient and that the voter list is a protected, internally created database that is exempt from federal production requirements.
Judge Johnston wrote in a footnote, “Given the lack of an adequate basis or purpose, one is left to wonder what the real purpose was for the Justice Department to go to the trouble of filing civil actions like this one all around the nation. Troubling though this question is, it is not before the Court at this time.”
Johnston ruled that the federal government failed to provide a necessary factual basis or a valid purpose for its demand, noting that the request lacked evidence of specific wrongdoing.
Moreover, the judge determined that the U.S. Attorney General cannot use broad records requests to conduct “fishing expeditions” into sensitive personal information without a clear connection to protecting individual voting rights.