By GARRY RAYNO, InDepthNH.org
CONCORD — A federal judge has dismissed the US Department of Justice suit against the state of New Hampshire seeking its voter registration list.
The federal government sued the state seeking a wide breadth of voter information including driver’s license numbers and the last four digits of Social Security numbers as well as addresses and other personal information much of which is confidential under state law.
U.S. District Court Judge Joseph N. LaPlante found the federal government failed to state why the information was required under the Civil Rights Act and the Help America Vote Act as the suit claimed.
Secretary of State David Scanlan praised the ruling.
“I am committed to protecting the private information of New Hampshire voters to the fullest extent required by law,” he said. “Today’s court order affirms that I fulfilled that commitment by upholding New Hampshire law and safeguarding your private information from disclosure.”
Since May the US DOJ has demanded voter registration lists and other information from states along with access to some state’s voting machines.
The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division first sued New Hampshire in September, 2025 for failing to produce its unredacted voter registration lists claiming clean voter rolls are the foundation of free and fair election.
The department claimed the information is needed to ascertain whether the state is following federal voting requirements, but failed to give a reason or a cause for the request, which Judge LaPlante said is “independently fatal to the United States’ claim.”
Scanlan stated when the federal government first sued the state, that the federal government had no legal authority to make such a request.
“As I stated in my prior response, New Hampshire law prohibits the sharing of this information with the United States Department of Justice in the manner you request,” Scanlan wrote in an Aug. 18, 2925 letter to Harmeet K. Dhillon, Assistant Attorney General, Civil Rights Division. “Having reviewed the citations in your August 18, 2025 letter with legal counsel, there does not appear to be any provision under federal law that compels the production of voter registration data superseding the provisions of New Hampshire statutes that I must follow.”
The DOJ also sought the information under the HAVA saying the state failed to comply with the act by not complying with demand letters for its state voter registration list.
But the state argued the act does not require such disclosures by states and that Congress purposely left such requirements out of the act, because elections are controlled by the states not the federal government.
The state also argued the DOJ had failed to present any evidence that the state had committed a substantive violation of the statute.
Instead the DOJ stated it “seeks these documents for one purpose only: to evaluate New Hampshire’s compliance with the list maintenance provisions of HAVA, and if appropriate, to bring an enforcement action.”
The DOJ also states the state’s response to the Election Administration and Voting Survey 2024 Comprehensive Report showed that the number of potential duplicate names that New Hampshire identified or removed from its voter list was lower than the national average.
“This second type of factual allegation about discrepancies between New Hampshire’s duplicate removal rates relative to other states’ was notably absent from the Attorney General’s letters to Secretary of State Scanlan,” LaPlante wrote.
He also noted the DOJ did not legally respond to the state’s request to dismiss the suit on the Civil Rights Act and HAVA alleged or potential violations.
The Trump administration has attempted to have the federal government take over responsibility for elections from the states through a number of executive orders and in a bill before Congress (the SAVE Act) that has as yet has failed to pass the US Senate.
The Brennan Center has been involved in the fight over election changes sought by the Trump administration.
“These demands by the Trump administration are unprecedented and a clear encroachment on states’ power to run elections as outlined in the Constitution,” the Center wrote. “The effort is part of the administration’s concerted campaign to interfere with future elections.”
The center also noted, the DOJ has made conflicting statements over its sharing of the voter lists with the Department of Homeland Security.
But in an April hearing in Rhode Island federal court the department noted it has a memorandum of understanding with the DHS to run the lists against the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database, the center said.
The database has a high error rate when that occurs and many legal voters could be removed from the voting rolls prior to the November general election, voting advocates have argued.
With LaPlante’s decision Monday, New Hampshire is the 11th state to have the DOJ’s suits dismissed by the federal courts, including Maine, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
Garry Rayno may be reached at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.