The Justice Department’s Virginia voter registration lawsuit is a federal case filed on January 16, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, seeking to force the state’s elections commissioner to hand over Virginia’s complete, unredacted voter registration database. The case, originally captioned United States v. Beals and later United States v. Koski, remains pending as of mid-2026, with competing motions to compel and to dismiss before District Judge Roderick C. Young.1Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. United States v. Beals
What the DOJ Is Demanding
The DOJ wants Virginia’s full statewide voter file, unredacted. That includes voters’ names, addresses, dates of birth, driver’s license numbers, and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers.2Democracy Docket. DOJ Sues Virginia for Access to Voter Rolls The demand grew out of a March 25, 2025, executive order titled “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections,” which directed federal agencies to review every state’s voter rolls and cross-reference them against federal immigration databases.3White House. Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections Attorney General Pam Bondi described “accurate, well-maintained voter rolls” as essential to election integrity.4Ohio Capital Journal. The Department of Justice Is Suing States for Sensitive Voter Data
Virginia Elections Commissioner Susan Beals refused. She pointed to state and federal privacy laws, including Code of Virginia § 24.2-405, which restricts disclosure of voter registration information — Social Security digits among them — to qualified persons for specified purposes.5Arlington County, Virginia. Data Privacy Policy6Democracy Docket. Virginia DOJ Voter Data Access Challenge Virginia was one of about 30 states plus the District of Columbia that the DOJ sued after refusing the department’s demand letters. The suits crossed party lines: 23 targeted states with Democratic election officials, eight targeted states with Republican ones.7Brennan Center for Justice. Resistance to the Trump Administration’s Demands for State Voter Files Is Bipartisan
The Federal Statutes at the Center of the Case
The complaint argues that Virginia’s refusal violates three federal laws: the Civil Rights Act of 1960, the National Voter Registration Act, and the Help America Vote Act.8U.S. Department of Justice. Justice Department Sues Virginia for Failure to Produce Voter Rolls
The DOJ’s main lever is Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960, codified at 52 U.S.C. § 20703. That provision requires election officials to retain records related to voting and voter registration and make them available for inspection by the attorney general. The DOJ contends the state’s registration database falls within that scope, and that withholding it obstructs the federal government’s ability to investigate whether Virginia is properly maintaining its rolls under the NVRA and HAVA.6Democracy Docket. Virginia DOJ Voter Data Access Challenge
Critics read the statutes more narrowly. The NVRA’s public-inspection provision, 52 U.S.C. § 20507(i), covers records about list-maintenance activities — things like notices sent to voters who may have moved — not the underlying registration database itself.9Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 52 U.S.C. § 20507 Critics also argue Title III applies to records that “come into the possession” of election officials rather than to databases the state itself generates.
Who Else Is in the Case
Two groups of intervenors joined on the defense side. The ACLU represents Common Cause and Katherine Ellena, a Virginia voter, arguing that releasing unredacted voter files containing driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers would violate voter privacy and deter participation.10ACLU. United States v. Koski On May 6, 2026, the court also granted the NAACP and NAACP Virginia State Conference permission to intervene as defendants.6Democracy Docket. Virginia DOJ Voter Data Access Challenge
In their May 19, 2026, motion to dismiss, the ACLU-represented intervenors made three arguments. First, that the voter registration database falls outside Title III because the statute covers records that “come into the possession” of election officials, not databases the state generates. Second, that the DOJ failed to establish the written “basis and purpose” the statute requires — a factual basis for suspecting a federal law violation and an explanation of how the requested records would advance the investigation. Third, that the DOJ’s stated purpose was a pretext, and the real goal was to build “an unauthorized and unlawful national voter database” and use it to challenge voters’ eligibility.11ACLU. Memorandum of Law in Support of Intervenor-Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss
Where the Case Stands
The docket has moved quickly. The DOJ filed an amended complaint on March 19, 2026, and a motion to compel production of Virginia’s voter records on April 29, 2026. Both the Virginia Department of Elections and the NAACP filed motions to dismiss on May 19, 2026. Intervenors filed briefs on June 1, 2026, opposing the motion to compel, arguing the government cannot bypass discovery and trial to secure the “ultimate relief” of the case.12ACLU. Intervenor-Defendants’ Memorandum in Opposition to Motion to Compel On June 16, 2026, Judge Young granted the Democratic National Committee’s motion to file an amicus brief.1Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. United States v. Beals
As of mid-June 2026, no trial date has been set, and the court has not ruled on either the motion to compel or the motions to dismiss.
How Courts Have Ruled in Similar Cases
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.13State Democracy Research Initiative. Tracker: DOJ Lawsuits Seeking States’ Sensitive Voter Data
The reasoning tracked the same objections raised by the Virginia intervenors. Courts in California and Oregon found 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 given to government actions “no longer holds,” citing the DOJ’s inconsistent justifications and evidence suggesting the data might be used for immigration enforcement rather than election-law compliance. The Michigan court ruled on the narrower ground that voter rolls do not constitute records that “come into the possession” of election officials within the meaning of the Civil Rights Act.14Brennan Center for Justice. Federal Courts Reject Trump Administration’s Attempts to Obtain Private Voter Data
The appeals 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, 2026.15Bloomberg Law. Trump DOJ’s Voter Roll Demands Set for Appeals Court Tests Legal observers suggested the DOJ was pushing for a circuit split that could reach the Supreme Court before the November 2026 midterms.16Votebeat. Michigan Voter Roll Case DOJ Appeal Supreme Court Only Oklahoma settled, agreeing on March 24, 2026, to provide its voter data in exchange for dismissal.13State Democracy Research Initiative. Tracker: DOJ Lawsuits Seeking States’ Sensitive Voter Data
What the DOJ Plans to Do With the Data
During a March 2026 court hearing in the Rhode Island case, the DOJ’s Acting Chief of the Voting Section confirmed the department planned to run collected voter roll data through the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database to identify registrants who might be noncitizens.17Brennan Center for Justice. Tracker: Justice Department Requests for Voter Information
SAVE was originally built to verify immigration status for government benefits, not to determine whether someone is a U.S. citizen. Its expanded use for voter verification has produced significant errors. Public records in Texas showed that 17% of voter records searched using full Social Security numbers returned incorrect results, and in Denton County at least 14% of voters flagged as potential noncitizens turned out to be citizens.18Protect Democracy. SAVE Tool Report In Missouri, county clerks reported that more than half of the voters flagged by SAVE 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.19Brennan Center for Justice. Watch Out for False Voter Fraud Claims Fueled by SAVE Program
The system does not always have current citizenship data for people born abroad who later naturalized or derived citizenship, and DHS officials acknowledged the system was still adding data when it went live.20Texas Tribune. SAVE Voter Citizenship Tool Mistakes and Confusion The DOJ also required some cooperating states to sign a memorandum of understanding allowing the federal government to flag specific voters for removal from state rolls within 45 days.7Brennan Center for Justice. Resistance to the Trump Administration’s Demands for State Voter Files Is Bipartisan The prospect that Virginia’s data could be fed into that pipeline is central to the intervenors’ case.
Not to Be Confused With the 2024 Virginia Purge Case
The 2026 data lawsuit is a different case from the earlier fight over Virginia’s voter rolls. That earlier dispute involved an August 7, 2024, executive order by then-Governor Glenn Youngkin directing the DMV to share data with election officials daily so suspected noncitizens could be identified and removed. Flagged individuals had 14 days to affirm their citizenship before removal.21U.S. Department of Justice (Archives). Justice Department Sues Virginia for Violating Federal Law’s Prohibition on Systematic Efforts
The Biden-era DOJ and civil rights groups challenged the program under the NVRA’s “quiet period” provision, which prohibits systematic removal of voters within 90 days of a federal election. U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles found more than 1,600 registrations had been canceled and ordered the state to restore the affected voters. On October 30, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court stayed her order, allowing the program to continue during the challenge; Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson dissented.22SCOTUSblog. Supreme Court Allows Virginia to Remove Suspected Non-Citizens from Voter Rolls That case settled on April 17, 2026, after Governor Abigail Spanberger issued a March 2026 executive order requiring any systematic removal programs using computerized data-matching to be completed at least 90 days before a federal election.23Campaign Legal Center. Voters in Virginia Secure Settlement to End Illegal Voter Purge Program
The current lawsuit is not about removing voters directly. It is about whether Virginia has to turn over the raw database that could be used to identify them.