15SEP

Sixth Circuit rejects DOJ roll demand

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14:21UTC

A Sixth Circuit panel affirmed 2-1 the dismissal of the Justice Department's demand for Michigan's unredacted voter rolls, the first appellate ruling in the year-old voter-data fight.

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Key takeaway

The administration's voter-data push lost for the first time at an appeals court, binding four states.

A federal appeals court rejected the Justice Department's (DOJ) demand for Michigan's unredacted voter rolls on Wednesday 24 June, the first circuit-level ruling anywhere in the year-old voter-data fight ¹. In United States v. Benson, a Sixth Circuit panel affirmed the dismissal 2-1. Judge Mathis wrote that Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 cannot bear the weight of a demand for every voter's date of birth, partial Social Security number and driving-licence number. The ruling binds Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.

Congress wrote Title III to help the DOJ investigate officials who suppressed the vote. The department now invokes it, in the panel's words, 'for an inverse purpose, to ensure that some people have not voted' ². The two-judge majority refused to read the 1960 statute as authority for auditing whether individuals had cast ballots.

The DOJ reached this appeal already losing. It had appealed all eight of its trial-court dismissals in mid-June and, weeks earlier, had dropped its own national voter-database case rather than defend it . The panel handed the department its first outright loss at the circuit level. Judge Nalbandian dissented, preserving the DOJ a path to the full Sixth Circuit or the Supreme Court.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

The Department of Justice has spent more than a year trying to get Michigan to hand over its full voter roll, including personal details usually kept private, using a law originally passed in 1960 to stop officials from blocking Black Americans from voting. A federal appeals court just ruled the department cannot use that particular law for that purpose. It is the first time an appeals court, rather than a lower district court, has weighed in, and the ruling now applies to Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee alike.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

Title III of the 1960 Civil Rights Act lets the DOJ sue over the 'deprivation... of the right to vote', language drafted to unblock ballot access, not to justify bulk pre-litigation demands for unredacted voter files. Unlike the National Voter Registration Act, it contains no provision authorising the kind of disclosure the department sought.

The DOJ narrowed its own case in June by dropping the NVRA and HAVA claims that could have supplied that authority, after courts had already rejected those theories elsewhere. That left only a statute textually mismatched to the request it was being used to support.

Escalation

Escalation direction: down. Benson closes one of the DOJ's last live statutory theories, adding to a retreat already underway. The department has already dropped eight of its 31 original suits and voluntarily narrowed its legal theory twice this year. A further appellate loss in the remaining circuits would end the initiative entirely rather than escalate it.

What could happen next?

Consequence
The ruling binds Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee, ending the DOJ's Title III approach in those four states unless the full Sixth Circuit or the Supreme Court reverses the panel.
Risk
With only one statutory theory left standing, the DOJ risks its entire voter-data programme collapsing on a single ruling from any of the other circuits still hearing the remaining appeals.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Primary parallel: NAACP v. Alabama (1958) blocked Alabama's demand for the NAACP's membership rolls, ruling that a facially neutral disclosure order can still be used to identify and intimidate a protected group. The Sixth Circuit's Benson panel applied the same logic in reverse, treating a records law meant to expose vote suppression as unsuitable for a request that could instead enable it.

Counter-parallel: Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute (2018) upheld Ohio's own authority to purge its voter rolls using a supplemental data-matching process, a 5-4 ruling giving states wide latitude over their own list-maintenance data. Benson leaves that latitude untouched, blocking something different instead: an outside federal demand for the underlying unredacted files themselves. That distinction is why the two rulings sit together rather than in conflict.

Consensus view: Brennan Center voting rights director Wendy Weiser argues Title III of the 1960 Civil Rights Act was written to force segregationist registrars to produce records proving they were blocking Black voters. Using it to compel voter-roll disclosure for the opposite purpose inverts the statute's original design. That is exactly the reasoning the Sixth Circuit panel adopted when it wrote the DOJ was pursuing an 'inverse purpose' .

Counter-view: Heritage Foundation election law fellow Hans von Spakovsky argues the 2-1 split shows the statutory question is genuinely contestable. He argues the DOJ's real mistake was narrowing its case in June to a single 66-year-old statute, after dropping its National Voter Registration Act and Help America Vote Act claims. Those options remain untested, not foreclosed.

Key tension: Whether Benson closes off the DOJ's voter-data programme entirely, or only closes the one statutory theory the department chose to run with this year.

Sources:US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit

Mentions:9th Circuit →Department of Justice →Civil Rights Act of 1960 →Michigan →Oregon →Kentucky →Tennessee →Alabama →NAACP →Heritage Foundation →National Voter Registration Act →Help America Vote Act →United States →Supreme Court of the United States →

First Reported In

Update #11 · Money uncapped, ballot rules untouched

US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit· 1 Jul 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

DOJ stakes voter-data fight on appeal

The DOJ's appeal of all eight voter-data dismissals set up the first appellate test that the Sixth Circuit has now decided against it.

Occurred 16 Jun 2026

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DOJ drops its own database case

The DOJ's earlier retreat from its own national voter-database case preceded its first outright appellate loss in Benson.

Occurred 2 Jun 2026

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This Event

Sixth Circuit rejects DOJ roll demand

The first circuit-level loss puts the administration's push to collect detailed voter files on the defensive across four states.

Led to

DOJ appeals its Michigan voter-file loss

DOJ's en banc petition escalates the Michigan voter-file dispute after the Sixth Circuit panel's 24 June dismissal.

Occurred 8 Jul 2026

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DOJ loses again on state voter files

The 6th Circuit's June affirmance of the Michigan dismissal remains DOJ's only decided appeal, and it lost.

Occurred 22 Jul 2026

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Different Perspectives

Cook Political Report

Cook Political Report published a dated House ratings snapshot on 11 September and changed no seat's rating, holding at 206 Democratic to 208 Republican with 21 tossups since its 3 September batch. Publishing without a change is a dated decision, not an oversight, leaving Republicans ahead on seats while Democrats lead the national vote by 6.6 points.

Department of Justice

A Justice Department official told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that preservation letters like the one sent to Aguilar go to states the department is in active litigation against over incomplete voter registration lists. The department would not answer the paper's specific questions about the personal investigation notice riding inside the same letter.

Francisco Aguilar

Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar publicly rejected Justice Department pressure on 12 September, days after a 4 September letter combined a records-preservation demand with a personal notice that he is under investigation. He said he will not fold until a judge orders him to, making his office's compliance a political stand rather than a routine filing.

Brett Kavanaugh

Justice Brett Kavanaugh denied Missouri's state-track stay application alone on 8 September without referring it, then sent the separate federal-track application in Onder v. State of Missouri to the full Court, which stayed it on 10 September. His choice of which application to keep and which to share decided how much of the fight one justice controlled.

Robert Onder and the federal plaintiffs

Robert Onder and three other Republican plaintiffs won a temporary restraining order from Chief Judge Stephen R. Clark on 8 September ordering Missouri to use HB 1, then lost it when the Supreme Court stayed it on 10 September. Their federal route ran parallel to Hoskins's own reversal and ended the same way, with the 2022 map governing 3 November.

Richard Von Glahn and People Not Politicians

Richard Von Glahn and People Not Politicians won Von Glahn v. Hoskins on 3 September, persuading the Missouri Supreme Court that their referendum petition stripped HB 1 of effect and sent it to voters as Proposition A. The contempt finding against Hoskins this week confirms their win held even after the state's chief election officer tried to reverse it.