Voting
CIVIL RIGHTS DIVISION’S
FOUNDATIONAL APPROACH
Since 1957, federal civil rights enforcement has protected the right to vote won through the struggle of Black Americans and other marginalized communities. The Civil Rights Division has enforced federal voting laws to dismantle discriminatory redistricting, protect language-minority and disabled voters, expand voter access, and ensure that eligible voters can cast ballots freely and have them counted.
CIVIL RIGHTS DIVISION'S FOUNDATIONAL APPROACH
Voting is the engine of our democracy, with free and fair elections serving as the source of our government’s legitimacy. Voting rights are thus central to democratic order and the rule of law. As the Supreme Court said nearly 140 years ago, the right to vote is “a fundamental political right, because [it is] preservative of all rights.” Having and exercising the right to vote is a core ingredient of democratic inclusion.
Voting Rights Act: Ensuring Equal Access to the Ballot
Since its creation in 1957, the Civil Rights Division has worked to secure voting rights for all Americans. The Division enforces the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA), one of our nation’s core civil rights statutes. The VRA was enacted to overcome persistent and often violent resistance to Black citizens’ efforts to register and vote in the southern states. Section 2 of the VRA, which applies nationwide, prohibits voting practices and procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership in a language-minority group. Other provisions of the VRA require certain jurisdictions to provide bilingual election materials and assistance to voters with limited English proficiency. And the Americans with Disabilities Act likewise requires that individuals with disabilities be afforded a full and equal opportunity to vote in all elections.
For decades, the Division brought cases under the VRA to challenge redistricting plans and other voting procedures that denied racial and language-minority voters a fair chance to participate in the political process. Most of the Division’s VRA cases challenged discrimination at the local level—in cities, counties, and towns around the country. Thanks in part to the VRA, the electoral process truly is more open and inclusive today than it was in 1965. But despite significant improvements, discriminatory voting practices persist. In just the last 25 years, the Division brought VRA cases in nearly half the states, striking down practices that primarily impeded voters of color from having an equal opportunity to participate in the political life of their communities.
Making Voter Registration Simple, Accessible, and Fair
The Civil Rights Division also enforces the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), sometimes called the Motor Voter Act, which Congress enacted in 1993 to expand voter registration and participation in federal elections. The law requires states to offer voter registration through the mail, at driver’s license offices, and when people apply for public assistance or disability services. The NVRA also creates requirements for how states maintain voter registration lists for federal elections, including limitations on how and when names may be removed from the voter rolls. These provisions promote accurate voter registration lists and guard against the incorrect removal of eligible voters.
The Division also enforces some parts of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA), including provisions requiring poll workers to provide a provisional ballot when a voter declares they are duly registered but their name does not appear in the poll book. Other provisions of HAVA require jurisdictions to provide at least one accessible voting machine at each polling place to permit voters with disabilities to vote independently.
Protecting the Voting Rights of Military and Overseas Citizens
The Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) requires states to allow members of the military, their family members, and U.S. citizens residing overseas to register and vote absentee in elections for federal offices. When requested by a UOCAVA voter, states must send the voter an absentee ballot early enough for the voter to receive it, complete it, and send it back. When states have failed to make sure that ballots are sent to qualified UOCAVA-protected voters in a timely manner, the Civil Rights Division has successfully obtained court orders and consent decrees to ensure that qualified service members and overseas voters were able to cast their ballots and know that they were counted.
WHAT’S CHANGED SINCE
JANUARY 20, 2025?
Civil Rights Division political leadership has redirected voting enforcement from protecting the right to vote toward undermining it. Dismissing Voting Rights Act (VRA) cases, taking positions to weaken VRA protections, pressuring states to dismantle equal-opportunity districts, and demanding mass voter registration data have stripped back hard-won protections and threaten confidence in free and fair elections.
WHAT'S CHANGED SINCE JANUARY 20, 2025?
The Civil Rights Division’s work on voting rights has changed dramatically under the current Trump administration.
Racial Discrimination Enforcement Has Been Gutted
Enforcement of statutes designed to eradicate racial discrimination in voting—traditionally the heart of the Division’s voting work—has been the hardest hit. In early 2025, the Division moved to dismiss most of its ongoing lawsuits, including cases enforcing Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. It has pressured states to dismantle voting districts that provide voters of color an equal opportunity to elect their candidates of choice. After decades of defending Section 2’s constitutionality, the Division urged the Supreme Court to adopt a heightened standard designed to make Section 2 challenges significantly harder to sustain—and the Court’s decision followed that path.
The Division has Reoriented its Mission around Alleged Voter Fraud
The Division says it is aggressively focused on preventing voter fraud and coordinating with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to identify alleged non-citizens on the voter rolls. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon issued a new mission statement to guide the Division’s voting rights work that centers politically-charged issues not grounded in the statutes the Division enforces, such as voting fraud, and makes no reference to racial discrimination in voting. The Division’s political leadership forced out the career chief of the Voting Section, replaced that leadership with a political appointee serving as acting chief, and later installed another acting chief who reportedly lacked federal election law experience.
The Division Has Sought Sweeping New Control Over Local Election Data
The Division has also pursued an alarming expansion of federal authority over local elections by demanding complete voter registration lists from all states and reportedly sharing the data it receives with DHS, including highly confidential information such as driver’s license and Social Security numbers. The Division has filed over 30 lawsuits against states and the District of Columbia to compel disclosure of the information. This approach is notable because voter fraud, particularly non-citizen voting, is exceedingly rare and would ordinarily be handled by criminal prosecutors outside of the Division.
Tracking the Changes
Voting Cases Shut Down Since January 20, 2025
Red Line does not include every Civil Rights Division case. Learn what Red Line tracks.
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Voting Cases Pursued Since January 20, 2025
Red Line does not include every Civil Rights Division case. Learn what Red Line tracks.
Tangipa v. Newsom
25-cv-10616 (C.D. Cal.)
On November 13, 2025, the Civil Rights Division announced that it had moved to intervene in this lawsuit brought by the California Republican Party to challenge California’s 2025 redistricting. The California redistricting was in direct response to Texas’s July 2025 redistricting (undertaken after the Division’s July 7, 2025 letter) which produced more Republican-leaning congressional districts. In its complaint, the Division alleges that California’s redistricting is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander and violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act because certain districts were drawn to increase Latino voting strength.
On January 14, 2026, the court denied the Division’s request to throw out the new maps, concluding that the redistricting was a partisan (and thus not reviewable) effort to counterbalance the new Republican-favored Texas map, not an impermissible use of race. In the court’s words, “the record contains a mountain of statements reflecting the partisan goals of Proposition 50, from which [DOJ and the California Republican Party] have culled a molehill of statements showing race consciousness on the part of the mapmaker and certain legislators.”
This marks the first racial-gerrymandering case filed by the Division in recent memory—and the first aimed at dismantling districts allegedly drawn to provide voters of color an opportunity to elect candidates of their choice. The California Republican Party is represented by the Dhillon Law Group, the law firm founded by Harmeet Dhillon, the current Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights.
Letter Requesting Information Related to Minnesota’s Same Day Voting Program
On January 2, 2026, the Civil Rights Division sent a letter to Minnesota officials requesting extensive information about the State’s same-day voter registration program, including detailed voter information from the March 5, 2024 primary and the November 5, 2024 general election.
The Division stated in the letter that it was “particularly concerned with votes and registrations accepted on the basis of ‘vouching’ from other registered voters or residential facility employees.” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon posted the letter on social media and went further, asserting that “[t]his system seems facially inconsistent with the Help America Vote Act of 2002. We’ll see!” However the letter lacks factual or legal support for the conclusion that the Minnesota system facially violates the Help America Vote Act. According to the Minnesota Secretary of State, the Minnesota vouching provision for in person registration applies to proof of residency for people registering to vote in person, not proof of identity.
Publicly suggesting that a state election system is unlawful before an investigation has begun, much less been completed, is inconsistent with the Division’s traditional commitment to objective, fact-driven investigations.
The letter also followed closely on political and social-media activity: it came three days after a post by a conservative activist raising the issue, and two days after President Trump shared a New York Post article regarding the topic.
United States v. Raffensperger (Georgia)
25-cv-00548 (M.D. Ga.) and 26-cv-00485 (N.D. Ga.)
On December 18, 2025, the Civil Rights Division announced it sued Georgia under the Civil Rights Act of 1960 to compel the disclosure of Georgia’s complete voter registration list, including highly confidential personally identifiable information (e.g., driver’s license number or last four digits of Social Security numbers). According to the lawsuit, Georgia refused to provide the requested information, citing privacy concerns.
On January 23, 2026, the court dismissed the case, holding that it had been improperly filed in the Middle District of Georgia because the “Attorney General’s demand was not made, and the demanded records are not located, in the Middle District of Georgia.” The Division refiled the lawsuit in the Northern District of Georgia in Atlanta.
On March 5, 2026, eighteen former Civil Rights Division attorneys filed an amicus brief, opposing the Division’s attempt to compel production of sensitive voter records. The attorneys, including trial attorneys and senior officials, worked in voting enforcement for the Civil Rights Division in careers collectively spanning from 1968 to 2025. The brief catalogs DOJ’s longstanding interpretation of the relevant statutes and its past practice of seeking voting information, concluding that the Division’s “sweeping request” here is “without adequate investigative rationale” and represents a “radical departure” from the Division’s “targeted, justified” requests in the past.
United States v. Aguilar (Nevada)
25-cv-00728 (D. Nev.)
On December 12, 2025, the Civil Rights Division announced it sued Nevada under the Civil Rights Act of 1960 to compel disclosure of the State’s complete statewide voter registration list, including highly confidential personally identifiable information (e.g., driver’s license number or last four digits of Social Security numbers). According to the lawsuit, Nevada refused to provide the requested information, citing privacy concerns.
This lawsuit is rooted in the Division’s unprecedented decision to send letters to all states seeking voter registration data, an expansive exercise of federal authority that the Division ties to “election integrity” and the President’s March 25, 2025, Executive Order.
Texas Agreement to Turn Over Sensitive Voter Data
On December 9, 2025, the Texas Secretary of State entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Civil Rights Division, agreeing to provide DOJ with the state’s voter registration list including highly confidential personally identifiable information (e.g., driver’s license number or last four digits of Social Security numbers) and to cooperate with DOJ-led voter list maintenance efforts. Texas’s voter registration database contains nearly 19 million registered voters.
The agreement is part of a broader effort by DOJ to obtain unredacted statewide voter registration lists from all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Under the MOU, DOJ receives a copy of the state’s voter registration list. If DOJ identifies “any issues, insufficiencies, inadequacies, deficiencies, anomalies, or concerns,” with the list, Texas will “clean” its voter list “by removing ineligible voters” and resubmit the updated data to DOJ for verification.
The agreement represents a significant shift in the relationship between the federal government and state election officials. The Constitution assigns states primary responsibility for administering elections. The National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) requires states (not DOJ) to “conduct a general program that makes a reasonable effort” to remove voters who have become ineligible because of death or a change of residence. Similarly, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) requires each state to develop a system “that makes a reasonable effort to remove [from the voter list] registrants who are ineligible to vote.” As one federal court explained when dismissing DOJ’s lawsuit seeking access to Maine’s complete voter registration database, Congress did not authorize the federal government to “loom over the shoulder of the state election official to point out and demand the correction of inaccuracies.”
Former Civil Rights Division voting attorneys and election law experts have noted significant legal and policy concerns with the MOA. Most notably, the agreement requires Texas to remove identified voters within 45 days of receiving notice from DOJ, even though the NVRA and HAVA establish detailed procedures governing many voter removals, including notice requirements and waiting periods that often extend well beyond 45 days.
While the agreement does not specify how DOJ will identify allegedly ineligible voters, what databases it will use, or what standards it will apply when making those determinations, reporting suggests that DOJ is running statewide voter registration data through the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (“SAVE”) database. But recent changes to the SAVE database have made its results fraught with errors, and risk removing eligible voters from the registration list. In June 2026, a court ordered the Trump administration to roll back these changes, stating that “the record shows that the modified SAVE has caused inaccurate rather than accurate matching of citizenship data.”
Texas itself has emphatically embraced the use of the modified SAVE database to identify alleged non-citizen voters. It intervened in litigation to defend its own use of the SAVE database despite being aware that the system incorrectly flagged eligible U.S. citizens. A ProPublica investigation found that in Texas, “more than 5% of the voters SAVE identified as noncitizens proved to be citizens.”
The MOU also raises questions about whether voter information collected by DOJ may ultimately be used for immigration enforcement purposes rather than solely for the administration of federal election laws. Several courts have raised questions regarding DOJ’s use of statewide voter lists for immigration enforcement. The MOU does not restrict DOJ from sharing or using the data for those purposes.
It is also unclear how DOJ intends to store, protect, and share the sensitive voter information it is collecting. Analyses by the Brennan Center for Justice and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) have identified significant unanswered questions regarding data security, access controls, and retention policies.
While many states voluntarily provided voter registration records to DOJ, only Texas and Alaska agreed to formal MOUs authorizing DOJ to identify allegedly ineligible voters and require state action in response. A settlement agreement between DOJ and Oklahoma permits DOJ access to state voter registration records but expressly limits the Department’s use of that information to assessing compliance with federal voting laws and other authorities assigned to the Civil Rights Division. The agreement does not authorize DOJ to direct Oklahoma to remove individual voters from the rolls.
United States v. Hanzas (Vermont)
25-cv-00903 (D. Vt.)
On December 2, 2025, the Civil Rights Division announced it sued Vermont under the Civil Rights Act of 1960 to compel disclosure of the State’s complete statewide voter registration list, including highly confidential personally identifiable information (e.g., driver’s license number or last four digits of Social Security numbers). According to the lawsuit, Vermont refused to provide the requested information, citing privacy concerns.
This lawsuit is rooted in the Division’s unprecedented decision to send letters to all states seeking voter registration data, an expansive exercise of federal authority that the Division ties to “election integrity” and the President’s March 25, 2025, Executive Order.
United States v. Albence (Delaware)
25-cv-01453 (D. Del.)
On December 2, 2025, the Civil Rights Division announced it sued Delaware under the Civil Rights Act of 1960 to compel disclosure of the State’s complete statewide voter registration list, including highly confidential personally identifiable information (e.g., driver’s license number or last four digits of Social Security numbers). According to the lawsuit, Delaware refused to provide the requested information, citing privacy concerns.
This lawsuit is rooted in the Division’s unprecedented decision to send letters to all states seeking voter registration data, an expansive exercise of federal authority that the Division ties to “election integrity” and the President’s March 25, 2025, Executive Order.
Election Monitoring for November 5, 2025 Elections
The Civil Rights Division has a longstanding practice of monitoring polling places on election day using federal observers and Division attorneys and staff. The purpose is to assess compliance with federal voting rights laws by observing polling practices, taking notes, and writing internal reports. The Division may use information gathered through election monitoring as part of its enforcement of federal voting rights laws. The Division’s election monitoring has been completed by career staff trained in election monitoring given the importance to avoid bias or the perception of bias in monitoring activities.
The Division sharply departed from that non-partisan tradition in its November 2025 election monitoring. The Division announced that it would send election monitors to sites in California and New Jersey for the November 5, 2025 elections. Although the press release briefly mentioned civil rights statutes, it focused on election integrity and “ballot security” matters, even though the Division has no authority over federal voter fraud statutes. The monitoring followed requests by partisan organizations that did not raise civil rights issues.
In addition, in a highly unusual move, rather than sending career staff, the Division sent Michael Gates, then a political appointee in the Civil Rights Division and former City Attorney for Huntington Beach, to monitor elections in Orange County. Read more about the Division’s staffing.
United States v. Oliver (New Mexico)
25-cv-01193 (D.N.M.), No. 26-2126 (10th Cir.)
On December 2, 2025, DOJ’s Civil Rights Division announced it sued New Mexico under the Civil Rights Act of 1960 to compel disclosure of the State’s complete statewide voter registration list, including highly confidential personally identifiable information (e.g., driver’s license number or last four digits of Social Security numbers).
On July 14, 2026, the court dismissed the case in its entirety, finding that DOJ’s demand for the statewide voter list failed to comply with the Civil Rights Act’s requirement to state the “basis and purpose” of the demand because “[n]owhere does the DOJ articulate any factual suggestion that New Mexico has violated [federal voting laws]” or alleged a factual basis to “indicate the State has a pattern or practice of noncompliance with the same.”
DOJ appealed this decision on July 24, 2026 to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals.
This lawsuit arose from DOJ’s unprecedented decision to seek voter registration data from every state, an expansive exercise of federal authority that DOJ ties to “election integrity” and the President’s March 25, 2025, Executive Order.
Letter to Texas Regarding Redistricting
In a sharp break from ordinary Civil Rights Division practice, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon sent Texas a letter on July 7, 2025, asserting that the boundaries of four Texas congressional districts that provided Black and Latino voters an equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice “constitute illegal racial gerrymanders” and threatening legal action if the State failed to redraw the districts.
Two days after AAG Dhillon’s letter, Governor Abbott called for the legislature to address redistricting in a special session, citing the “constitutional concerns” raised by AAG Dhillon’s letter. Soon after, President Trump publicly urged Texas Republicans to redraw the districts to create more Republican-friendly maps, fueling a wave of redistricting efforts in Texas and other states that could influence control of the House of Representatives in the 2026 midterm elections. Within weeks of AAG Dhillon’s letter, Texas passed a new congressional plan, which is being challenged in court (LULAC v. Abbott, 21-cv-00259) as intentionally discriminatory against Black and Latino voters.
Typically, before stating a legal position on the validity of a districting plan, the Division conducts a thorough factual and legal analysis. AAG Dhillon’s letter reflected little of that process. On November 18, 2025, a federal court found the letter “challenging to unpack … because it contains so many factual, legal, and typographical errors.”
In another alarming departure from longstanding DOJ norms, the court found the evidence revealed that the July 7, 2025 letter was circulating in the White House and discussed with the Texas Governor one week before it was issued, raising concerns about political interference and collusive coordination. The district court issued a preliminary injunction blocking Texas from using the map during the 2026 election cycle.
On December 4, 2025, the Supreme Court issued an emergency order that stayed the lower court’s ruling and allows the 2025 map to be used for the 2026 midterm elections while the case proceeds. The majority opinion does not reference the DOJ letter, but the three justices in dissent point out the DOJ letter’s incorrect legal analysis.
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