DOJ’s Virginia Voter Registration Lawsuit: Demands and Status

The U.S. Department of Justice sued Virginia Elections Commissioner Susan Beals on January 16, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, seeking to force the state to hand over its complete, unredacted voter registration database. The DOJ Virginia voter registration lawsuit, filed as Case No. 3:26-cv-00042 and later recaptioned United States v. Koski, remains pending as of mid-2026, with motions to compel and motions to dismiss before District Judge Roderick C. Young.¹²

What the Justice Department Is Demanding

The DOJ wants Virginia’s full statewide voter file in unredacted form. That includes voters’ names, addresses, dates of birth, driver’s license numbers, and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers.³

The complaint alleges that Virginia’s refusal to produce the file violates three federal statutes: the Civil Rights Act of 1960, the National Voter Registration Act, and the Help America Vote Act.⁴ The government’s lead theory rests on Title III of the Civil Rights Act, codified at 52 U.S.C. § 20703, which requires election officials to retain voting records and make them available for inspection by the attorney general. The DOJ argues the registration database falls within those records and that withholding it obstructs federal oversight of Virginia’s list-maintenance practices under the NVRA and HAVA.⁵

The suit grew out of a broader federal campaign. A March 25, 2025, executive order titled “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections” directed federal agencies to review every state’s voter rolls and cross-reference them against immigration databases, and it authorized subpoenas and the use of federal grant leverage to pressure uncooperative states.⁶⁷ By mid-2026 the DOJ had sent demand letters to at least 48 states and filed suit against 30 states and the District of Columbia, including Virginia.⁸

Why Virginia Refused

Commissioner Beals declined to turn over the file, citing state and federal privacy laws.⁵ Virginia Code § 24.2-405 restricts disclosure of voter registration information, including Social Security number digits, to qualified persons for specified purposes.⁹

Virginia’s defense also challenges the DOJ’s reading of federal law. Critics have noted that the NVRA’s public-inspection provision, 52 U.S.C. § 20507(i), covers records about list-maintenance activities — such as notices sent to voters who may have moved — rather than the raw registration database itself.¹⁰

Who Else Is in the Case

Two sets of outside parties joined as intervenor-defendants. The ACLU came in on behalf of Common Cause and Katherine Ellena, a Virginia voter, arguing that releasing unredacted files containing driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers would compromise voter privacy and deter participation.¹¹ On May 6, 2026, the court granted the NAACP and the NAACP Virginia State Conference leave to intervene as well.⁵

In their May 19, 2026, motion to dismiss, the ACLU-represented intervenors made three main arguments. First, that Title III covers only records that “come into the possession” of election officials, not databases the state generates itself. Second, that the DOJ failed to provide the required written “basis and purpose” explaining what federal violation it was investigating and how the voter file would advance that investigation. Third, that the stated NVRA and HAVA compliance purpose was pretextual, with the real objective being to build “an unauthorized and unlawful national voter database” to challenge voters’ eligibility.¹²

Where the Case Stands

The docket moved quickly through the first half of 2026:

March 19, 2026: The DOJ filed an amended complaint.
April 29, 2026: The DOJ filed a motion to compel production of the voter records.²
May 19, 2026: Both the Virginia Department of Elections and the NAACP filed motions to dismiss.⁵
June 1, 2026: Intervenors filed briefs opposing the motion to compel, arguing the government was trying to secure the ultimate relief of the case without discovery or trial.¹³
June 16, 2026: Judge Young granted the Democratic National Committee leave to file an amicus brief alongside the motion to compel.²

As of mid-June 2026, no trial date has been set, and the court has not ruled on the motion to compel or on either motion to dismiss.

How Similar DOJ Suits Have Fared Elsewhere

Virginia’s case is one of many. By June 2026, federal district courts had dismissed DOJ voter data lawsuits in at least eight states — California, Oregon, Michigan, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Maine. Every court that reached the merits ruled against the government, and the DOJ appealed each dismissal.¹⁴

The reasoning tracked arguments now before Judge Young. Courts in California and Oregon held that the DOJ had failed to establish the “basis” and “purpose” required by the Civil Rights Act. The Oregon court added that the “presumption of regularity” ordinarily extended to government actions “no longer holds,” pointing to inconsistent justifications and evidence suggesting the data might be used for immigration enforcement rather than election-law compliance. The Michigan court dismissed on narrower grounds, finding voter rolls are not records that “come into the possession” of election officials within the meaning of the Civil Rights Act.¹⁵

The appeals have moved fast. The Sixth Circuit heard oral argument in the Michigan case on May 13, 2026, and the Ninth Circuit heard the California and Oregon appeals on May 19, 2026.¹⁶ Legal observers have said the DOJ appears to be pressing for a circuit split that could reach the Supreme Court before the November 2026 midterm elections.¹⁷ Only Oklahoma has settled, agreeing on March 24, 2026, to turn over its voter data in exchange for dismissal.¹⁴

What Happens to the Data If the DOJ Wins

What the federal government plans to do with the voter files is central to the dispute. At a March 2026 hearing in the Rhode Island case, the DOJ’s Acting Chief of the Voting Section confirmed that the department intended to run collected voter data through the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database to flag possible noncitizens.¹⁸

SAVE was originally built to verify immigration status for government benefits rather than to confirm U.S. citizenship, and its early use for voter verification has produced significant errors. Public records from Texas showed that 17% of voter records searched using full Social Security numbers returned incorrect results. In Denton County, Texas, at least 14% of voters flagged as potential noncitizens were in fact citizens. In Missouri, county clerks reported that more than half of the voters SAVE flagged were U.S. citizens, many of them naturalized citizens who had registered at their naturalization ceremonies. DHS acknowledged providing incorrect information to at least five states.¹⁹²⁰ DHS deployed the expanded tool on an accelerated timeline and acknowledged that the system was still adding data when it went live. Local election officials in several states described the program as “not ready for prime time.”²¹

Not to Be Confused With the 2024 Youngkin Purge Case

This lawsuit is a separate matter from the earlier Virginia voter-purge dispute. That earlier case stemmed from an August 7, 2024, executive order by then-Governor Glenn Youngkin directing daily DMV data-sharing to identify and remove suspected noncitizens, with 14 days for flagged registrants to affirm citizenship. The Biden-era DOJ sued, Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles ordered more than 1,600 canceled registrations restored, and on October 30, 2024, the Supreme Court stayed her order over dissents from Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson.²²²³ That case settled on April 17, 2026, after Governor Abigail Spanberger issued an executive order requiring systematic removal programs to be completed at least 90 days before a federal election.²⁴ The 2026 lawsuit concerns the state’s refusal to produce the voter database itself, not any program for removing voters from it.

1
ACLU. Motion to Intervene Brief, United States v. Beals
2
Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. United States v. Beals
3
Democracy Docket. DOJ Sues Virginia for Access to Voter Rolls
4
U.S. Department of Justice. Justice Department Sues Virginia for Failure to Produce Voter Rolls
5
Democracy Docket. Virginia DOJ Voter Data Access Challenge
6
White House. Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections
7
Brennan Center for Justice. The President’s Executive Order on Elections Explained
8
Brennan Center for Justice. Resistance to the Trump Administration’s Demands for State Voter Files Is Bipartisan
9
Arlington County, Virginia. Data Privacy Policy
10
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 52 U.S.C. § 20507
11
ACLU. United States v. Koski
12
ACLU. Memorandum of Law in Support of Intervenor-Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss
13
ACLU. Intervenor-Defendants’ Memorandum in Opposition to Motion to Compel
14
State Democracy Research Initiative. Tracker: DOJ Lawsuits Seeking States’ Sensitive Voter Data
15
Brennan Center for Justice. Federal Courts Reject Trump Administration’s Attempts to Obtain Private Voter Data
16
Bloomberg Law. Trump DOJ’s Voter Roll Demands Set for Appeals Court Tests
17
Votebeat. Michigan Voter Roll Case DOJ Appeal Supreme Court
18
Brennan Center for Justice. Tracker: Justice Department Requests for Voter Information
19
Protect Democracy. SAVE Tool Report
20
Brennan Center for Justice. Watch Out for False Voter Fraud Claims Fueled by SAVE Program
21
Texas Tribune. SAVE Voter Citizenship Tool Mistakes and Confusion
22
U.S. Department of Justice (Archives). Justice Department Sues Virginia for Violating Federal Law’s Prohibition on Systematic Efforts
23
SCOTUSblog. Supreme Court Allows Virginia to Remove Suspected Non-Citizens from Voter Rolls
24
Campaign Legal Center. Voters in Virginia Secure Settlement to End Illegal Voter Purge Program