A federal judge appointed by President Donald Trump has handed his administration another loss in its quest to tackle alleged illegal voting ahead of the midterm elections.
District Judge David Barlow on Friday dismissed a case the Department of Justice brought against Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, a Republican, demanding that she turn over state voter data. The administration sought to compel Henderson, the state’s top election official, to hand over a complete list of Utah voters, including their names, birthdays and addresses as well as their driver’s license numbers or the last four digits of their Social Security numbers.
The Justice Department’s defeat in Utah is one of more than 25 voter-roll litigation defeats the Trump administration has suffered since beginning its campaign to address alleged illegal voting.
“The only appellate court yet to review this has split on largely partisan grounds,” a DOJ spokeswoman told Fox News Digital, noting that the department would be appealing the decision. “Five [sixth circuit] judges signed on to powerful dissents from denial of en banc review.”
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Federal lawyers initially sued Henderson, arguing that the Civil Rights Act of 1960 requires her to make certain voting records that “come into” her possession available for federal inspection. Barlow, however, cited a ruling from the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals that found “an ordinary English speaker would not say that she has come into possession of something that she created, established and maintained,” a reference to the broad dataset the DOJ was seeking to obtain.
The DOJ countered that line of argument by asserting that, even if the precise language of the law didn’t require the data to be surrendered, the purpose of the law in question was to serve as enforcement tool for federal election laws, so it would make little sense to interpret it as excluding the statewide voter-registration database that states use to carry out voter-list maintenance.
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Barlow rejected this line of argument, stating that judges have “no warrant to elevate vague invocations of statutory purpose over the words Congress chose.”
Trump tapped Barlow to serve on the federal bench in 2019. Before being nominated, Barlow served as a Republican congressional lawyer, a federal prosecutor and a private attorney.
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Barlow dismissed the administration’s complaint with prejudice, meaning that the DOJ cannot simply refile the same claim, though the department can appeal the ruling to a higher court.
While the Trump administration has charged a number of individuals with illegal voting since coming to power, it has yet to uncover evidence of widespread voter fraud. The DOJ still has three pending cases related to voter rolls in the states of Hawaii, Idaho and Delaware. It is also appealing losses in California and Oregon.
“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,” Henderson wrote on Threads. “Our office will continue to uphold the rule of law and safeguard the fundamental right to free, fair and secure elections for the people of Utah.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment when reached by Fox News Digital on Monday.
