DOJ sued Illinois election board to compel release of 8.3 million voters' driver's license and Social Security data

On December 18, 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice sued the executive director of the Illinois State Board of Elections, alleging the board's refusal to release Illinois's full, unredacted voter-registration list violated federal civil rights law. The 10-page suit, filed in federal court in Springfield and signed by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, sought a court order compelling the board to turn over the state's complete electronic voter file -- every registrant's full name, date of birth, residential address, and either a driver's license number or the last four digits of a Social Security number -- for roughly 8.3 million registered voters. DOJ argued the federal Civil Rights Act gives the attorney general the power to obtain the records as part of an investigation into Illinois's compliance with federal elections law; the Civil Rights Division first demanded the data that summer. A spokesman for the Illinois State Board of Elections declined to comment on the pending litigation.

The Illinois suit was filed the same day as parallel DOJ suits against Wisconsin, Georgia, and the District of Columbia, bringing the department's nationwide total to 22 such lawsuits; an Associated Press tally found DOJ had by then sought voter-roll data from at least 26 states. Assistant Attorney General Dhillon said in a statement that "the law is clear: states need to give us this information, so we can do our duty to protect American citizens from vote dilution." The push for Illinois's sensitive voter data was part of a broader Trump administration effort to assert federal authority over state-run elections, including shifting the Civil Rights Division's focus from ballot access toward combating claimed voter fraud.

Updates

2026-07-31 — Judge dismissed suit with prejudice [4, 5]

U.S. District Judge Colleen Lawless dismissed DOJ's lawsuit against Illinois with prejudice, ruling that Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 does not authorize DOJ to obtain a state's live, unredacted voter database and that DOJ's demand letter lacked the required factual and statutory basis -- DOJ's 19th consecutive loss in its nationwide voter-roll litigation.

2026-08-18 — DOJ appealed dismissal to Seventh Circuit [6, 7]

DOJ appealed the dismissal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, one of four new appeals -- also covering Colorado, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C. -- filed that day from recent district-court losses in its nationwide voter-data litigation; briefing was underway with DOJ's opening brief due September 28, 2026.