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DOJ sued D.C.'s Board of Elections to compel release of voters' unredacted driver's license and Social Security data

On December 18, 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice sued the District of Columbia Board of Elections in federal court, seeking to compel production of D.C.'s complete voter-registration database -- including every registrant's date of birth, address, and driver's license number or partial Social Security number -- after the board had turned over only a limited list citing D.C. privacy law. The suit, docketed as United States v. Evans, was one of four DOJ filed that day, also against Wisconsin, Illinois, and Georgia, bringing DOJ's nationwide campaign to 22 such lawsuits.

Part of: Trump DOJ Campaign to Collect State Voter Rolls

Jurisdiction
Federal
Location
District of Columbia

Abuses documented

Actors

On December 18, 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice sued the District of Columbia Board of Elections in federal court, seeking an order compelling the board to turn over D.C.'s complete, unredacted voter-registration database -- including 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. The Civil Rights Division had first demanded the data roughly a year earlier; D.C. election officials turned over only a limited voter list, arguing that D.C. privacy law precluded producing that personally identifying information. The case, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and docketed as United States v. Evans, invoked the National Voter Registration Act, the Help America Vote Act, and the Civil Rights Act of 1960 as the legal basis for the demand.

The D.C. suit was filed the same day as parallel DOJ suits against Wisconsin, Illinois, and Georgia, bringing the department's nationwide total to 22 such lawsuits. In its press release announcing all four filings, DOJ said three additional states -- Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee -- had that same day agreed to voluntarily comply, bringing the number of states in full or partial compliance to 10. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said, "The law is clear: states need to give us this information, so we can do our duty to protect American citizens from vote dilution. Today's filings show that regardless of which party is in charge of a particular state, the Department of Justice will firmly stand on the side of election integrity and transparency."

Updates

2026-08-06 -- Federal judge dismissed the suit [4]

U.S. District Judge Randolph D. Moss dismissed DOJ's suit against the D.C. Board of Elections in a 23-page ruling, rejecting the department's use of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 as part of what he called an "unprecedented effort to collect sensitive information about voters."

2026-08-17 -- DOJ appealed the dismissal to the D.C. Circuit [4]

DOJ appealed the dismissal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Why we recorded this

Election administration is primarily a state function, and D.C. residents' driver's-license numbers and partial Social Security numbers are sensitive data the District may lawfully decline to hand over to federal investigators absent a showing of need. DOJ sued the D.C. Board of Elections for withholding exactly that data, one of four suits DOJ filed that day as part of a nationwide campaign that had by then reached 22 lawsuits. This archive records the case because compelling a jurisdiction to surrender individually identifying data on every registered voter, over its own privacy-law objection, is the kind of federal data demand the Fourth Amendment's individualized-suspicion requirement exists to check, regardless of which jurisdiction is being sued.

Sources

  1. Justice Department Sues Four States for Failure to Produce Voter Rolls — U.S. Department of Justice (Office of Public Affairs) primary accessed September 15, 2026
  2. United States of America v. Evans — Democracy Docket investigative accessed September 15, 2026
  3. US Justice Department sues Wisconsin over voter data request — Associated Press (via WTMJ) investigative accessed September 15, 2026
  4. Judge dismissed DOJ suit seeking a full, unredacted copy of DC's voter registration data. — Just the News (citing NOTUS) investigative accessed September 15, 2026
  5. President Donald Trump's Justice Department sues Illinois over sensitive state voter data — Chicago Tribune secondary accessed September 15, 2026

See also