Federal Judge Dismisses DOJ Request for Massachusetts Voter Rolls

A federal judge in Massachusetts on April 9 tossed out a Department of Justice (DOJ) lawsuit demanding the state’s voter roll information.

Then-Attorney General Pam Bondi first requested the information in July as part of a broader DOJ effort to check if states were following federal election laws. Many states, including Massachusetts, have resisted.

The DOJ filed suit for the records, but U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin said the suit was deficient.

“The United States’ complaint fails for the simple reason that the Attorney General’s demand did not comply with Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960, the statute on which it purports to rely,” Sorokin ruled.

“Because the Court concludes that the Attorney General’s letter failed to ‘contain a statement of the basis’ for the demand as required by law, the Court need not reach the parties’ other arguments.”

In July 2025, the DOJ sent a letter to Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin, asking for an unredacted voter list. The list was to include “each registrant’s name, date of birth, residential address,” and other information.

In August 2025, Galvin asked for an extra 60 days to respond to the request, but then ceased responding. In December 2025, a state official told the DOJ that it would not comply.

Title III of the Civil Rights Act requires election officials in each state to “retain and preserve, for a period of twenty-two months” records and documentation related to elections for federal office. Federal law also says the state must hand over those records to the U.S. attorney general if the request is made in writing.

That request “shall contain a statement of the basis and the purpose” for inspection of the records, the law states.

In his order, the judge clarified that the July 2025 letter expressed only the “purpose” of the DOJ’s voter roll request—to examine if Massachusetts was in compliance with federal voting regulations.

But it never spelled out the “basis” for the DOJ to suspect that the state was out of compliance, he said.

“The July 22 letter identifies no requirements of federal law with which Massachusetts had, or was suspected to have, failed to comply,” Sorokin wrote.

Galvin, in a legal filing, also said the request was a violation of privacy and that those records were unrelated to any election held within the previous 22 months.

There were no citations of the Civil Rights Act and no references to concerns about Massachusetts’s compliance with the National Voting Rights Act, Help America Vote Act, or other federal statutes, he said.

The DOJ’s suit against Massachusetts was just one of dozens levied against states that wouldn’t comply. Several of those, including a legal action against California, have also been dismissed.