A federal judge appointed by President Donald Trump has dealt the administration another setback in its effort to address alleged illegal voting, just days before the midterm elections.
On Friday, District Judge David Barlow dismissed a lawsuit the Justice Department filed against Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, a Republican who serves as the state's top election official. The government wanted Henderson to turn over a complete list of Utah voters, including names, birthdays and addresses, along with either driver's license numbers or the last four digits of Social Security numbers.
The Utah ruling is at least the 25th loss for the administration in voter-roll litigation since it launched its campaign on the issue. More than 25 such defeats have now been recorded.
Federal attorneys had argued that the Civil Rights Act of 1960 obliges Henderson to make certain voting records that "come into" her possession available for federal inspection. Barlow relied on a Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals decision finding that "an ordinary English speaker would not say that she has come into possession of something that she created, established and maintained." That reasoning referred to the broad dataset the Justice Department was seeking.
The department responded that even if the wording of the statute did not demand the data, the law was meant to serve as an enforcement tool for federal election laws. In its view, it would make little sense to read the law as excluding the statewide voter-registration database that states use to maintain their voter lists.
Barlow was not persuaded. Judges, he wrote, have "no warrant to elevate vague invocations of statutory purpose over the words Congress chose."
Trump nominated Barlow to the federal bench in 2019. Before that, he worked as a Republican congressional lawyer, a federal prosecutor and a private attorney. He dismissed the complaint with prejudice, which bars the department from refiling the same claim, although it can still appeal to a higher court.
A Justice Department spokeswoman told Fox News Digital that the department will appeal. "The only appellate court yet to review this has split on largely partisan grounds," she said, adding that five Sixth Circuit judges "signed on to powerful dissents from denial of en banc review."
The administration has charged a number of individuals with illegal voting since taking office, but it has not yet turned up evidence of widespread voter fraud. The department still has three pending voter-roll cases, in Hawaii, Idaho and Delaware, and is appealing losses in California and Oregon.
Henderson welcomed the decision in a post on Threads. "We appreciate Judge Barlow's ruling dismissing the Department of Justice's lawsuit that sought to force us to disclose the private data of every Utah voter," she wrote, adding that her office will keep upholding the rule of law and safeguarding the right to free, fair and secure elections. The White House did not respond to a request for comment on Monday.
