13 Defeats, Not a Single Victory: Trump's Campaign to Obtain State Voter Rolls Fails in Court

The score has become so one sided that it now reads almost like a judgment on the intent behind the campaign itself. As of Monday afternoon, the Trump administration's Department of Justice stands at 0 to 13 after filing a total of 31 federal lawsuits seeking to force 30 states and the District of Columbia to hand over their unredacted voter rolls. Not a single one of those cases has survived judicial review so far. The remaining cases are, for all practical purposes, headed toward the same outcome.

Late Monday, Judge Thomas E. Johnston of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia rejected the federal government's attempt to obtain the state's sensitive voter records. Johnston, who was appointed to the bench by George W. Bush, ruled that the government's request was legally insufficient. It failed to provide either the factual basis or the statement of purpose required under the statute it relied upon, Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960. For that reason, he wrote, the government had failed to state a legally actionable claim in the first place. Particularly revealing is a footnote in the ruling that quietly exposes the entire campaign. Given the absence of both a factual foundation and a legitimate purpose, the judge wrote, the question remains what the Department of Justice was actually trying to accomplish by making the effort to file these civil lawsuits across the country. As troubling as that question may be, he added, it is not one that is before this Court to decide.

It is in that footnote that the true nature of what is happening is revealed. Nearly three hundred years ago, the political philosopher Montesquieu wrote that liberty exists only where the power of government is restrained by another power, and that the courts are the quiet barrier against which the arbitrariness of the executive ultimately breaks. What is now unfolding in more than a dozen federal courts is a practical confirmation of that idea. Judges appointed by presidents from both parties, including some appointed by Trump himself, have rejected the administration's demands for voter data. The government, the growing list of defeats suggests, is throwing lawsuit after lawsuit against the wall, hoping that one of them will eventually stick. So far, none has.

What this effort is really about becomes clear from the argument Trump has repeated for months. He wants to prove that noncitizens voted for Democrats on a large scale, a claim for which there is no credible evidence. Complete, unredacted voter rolls would provide the tool needed to retroactively support that claim with numbers. One organization dedicated to protecting democracy described the effort as an unprecedented and unconstitutional overreach. It warned that the objective is to remove legally registered voters from the rolls, undermine the 2026 elections, and violate the constitutional right to privacy. The strategy itself deserves close attention because it disguises itself as an ordinary bureaucratic procedure. The Department of Justice invokes a Civil Rights Act that is more than sixty years old, legislation originally enacted to secure Black Americans' right to vote, and turns its purpose upside down. Instead of protecting citizens from being denied access to the ballot box, the law is now being used to lay the groundwork for denying that access. The fact that the courts have recognized that legal maneuver for what it is should not be taken for granted. It is the product of a judiciary that has, so far, preserved its independence.

Our reporting has found that despite this string of setbacks, the administration has not abandoned its strategy. Thirty one lawsuits with thirteen final defeats means that a number of cases are still pending. A Justice Department that cannot even provide the purpose required by the very law on which it bases its lawsuits continues to pursue those cases with a determination that is difficult to explain as legal zeal alone. The suspicion Judge Johnston expressed in his footnote has therefore become far more than a legal detail. It has become the real story.

What remains is a picture that captures the condition of American democracy in the summer of 2026 with remarkable precision. A government that has elevated suspicion without evidence into public policy is confronting courts that continue to demand precisely that missing evidence. As long as the second power continues to restrain the first, the quiet barrier Montesquieu described remains intact. Whether it will continue to hold if the number of lawsuits keeps growing is the question hanging over everything.