Judge dismisses DOJ lawsuit seeking Washington state voter records

David Gutman and Jim Brunner, The Seattle Times on Sep 22, 2026

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SEATTLE — A federal judge in Seattle dismissed on Tuesday a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit demanding private information about Washington voters, continuing a losing streak for the Trump administration in similar cases across the country.

It was the 25th loss in a row for the Trump Justice Department in its demands for similar voter data from states.

The Government's demand for voter data violates federal law," U.S. District Judge Kymberly Evanson, a former President Joe Biden appointee, wrote in an 11-page order Tuesday. "This Court thus joins the many others that have dismissed essentially identical actions."

The DOJ sued Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs in December after he refused a request to turn over the confidential voter data, citing privacy laws and concerns about the Trump administration's efforts to build an unprecedented national voter database. The list includes voter information like birth dates, driver's license numbers and the last four digits of Social Security numbers.

Sixteen states, all led by Republicans, have said they will comply with the Trump administration's demands for unredacted voter lists.

Hobbs offered instead to provide a redacted list, which excluded voters' confidential information, but the DOJ went to court instead.

“Today’s decision reaffirms that my office has every right to protect voters’ private data,” Hobbs said in a statement Tuesday. “Baseless demands for state voter rolls are part of a broader pattern of federal overreach in states’ elections. The DOJ does not have the authority or any reason to interfere with state election administration.”

State Attorney General Nick Brown, whose office defended Washington against the federal lawsuit, accused the DOJ of trying to "plunder the private information of states' voters."

“We should not have to spend election season defending voters from their president, but victory after victory reminds us there is hope for the rule of law," Brown said in a statement.

DOJ did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

The U.S. Supreme Court last week declined to let the Trump administration, through the Postal Service, implement new regulations governing how states conduct vote-by-mail elections.

At a hearing in federal court last month, DOJ attorney Raymond Yang acknowledged the arguments he was making in Washington in seeking an unredacted voter list were not substantively different from those that have failed everywhere else.

Despite the unbroken chain of losses, the Justice Department has doubled and tripled down on its claims.

At the Seattle hearing, Yang asserted the Justice Department could demand records about Washington voters stretching back 100 years.

Tera Heintz, deputy solicitor general for Washington state, said at the hearing the Justice Department demands go far beyond its authority and are part of the president's efforts to undermine voting rights.

"DOJ's efforts to obtain the sensitive information of hundreds of millions of voters cannot be separated from the all-out assault by this administration on elections generally, Heintz said.