Court filing revealed DOJ officials sought Illinois voter data to purge noncitizens; emails showed staff directed to conceal purpose

On April 30, 2026, attorneys representing the Illinois AFL-CIO and other parties intervening in the federal NVRA lawsuit against Illinois filed court documents in Springfield that included internal DOJ emails, arguing those emails proved the agency's stated justification for demanding unredacted voter registration data—routine list maintenance under the National Voter Registration Act—was a pretext for a noncitizen-purge program.

A June 16, 2025, email from Michael Gates, then Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division, to his superior Harmeet Dhillon stated plainly that the division sought access to the Department of Homeland Security's Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database in order to "compare this SAVE database against states' voter rolls, which we will get directly from states under the (NVRA)." The SAVE database—originally established to verify citizenship status for public benefits—has been criticized for misidentifying people as noncitizens due to incomplete or inaccurate data. A second document filed April 30 was a November 18, 2025, email from Eric Neff, Acting Chief of the Civil Rights Division's Voting Section, directing DOJ attorneys on how to respond when states asked what DOJ intended to do with the data: "I believe our reply should always be: 'We will use the data in a manner consistent with Federal law' and say nothing more." Neff wrote that none of the relevant statutes required DOJ to disclose its plans and that "no judge will have authority to limit us beyond a promise of Federal law compliance."

The emails were filed in response to a public records request lawsuit. Illinois has refused to hand over unredacted voter files, instead providing partially redacted copies. DOJ filed suit in December 2025 in the Central District of Illinois; it also filed similar suits in 29 other states and Washington, D.C. Motions to dismiss are pending before Judge Colleen Lawless. Six other states' courts have already dismissed comparable DOJ NVRA suits; no court has yet ruled in DOJ's favor. Watchdog groups Common Cause and CREW filed a separate federal lawsuit in April 2026 alleging DOJ seeks to construct "a sprawling new voter surveillance and purging apparatus that endangers millions of Americans' fundamental voting and privacy rights."

Updates

2026-07-31 — Judge dismissed DOJ's Illinois lawsuit with prejudice, 19th straight defeat [3, 4]

On July 31, 2026, U.S. District Judge Colleen Lawless dismissed the DOJ's NVRA 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. The dismissal extended DOJ's nationwide voter-data litigation record to 0 wins in 19 district-court rulings; no court has yet ruled in DOJ's favor.

2026-08-06 — D.C. lawsuit dismissal extended DOJ's losing streak to 21 straight [5]

On August 6, 2026, U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss dismissed DOJ's bid to obtain unredacted Washington, D.C. voter rolls, writing that if the department disagreed with Congress's judgment on what records are needed, "it needs to lodge that objection with Congress." The dismissal extended DOJ's nationwide voter-roll litigation record to 0 wins in 21 district-court rulings; the department has appealed 16 of its losses and lost one appeal, at the 6th Circuit.