Federal courts dismissed two more Department of Justice (DOJ) voter-data lawsuits in the same week1. Chief US District Judge Lance E. Walker in Maine found the complaint legally underdeveloped, ruling that states are "primary regulators and administrators of elections for federal office"; Walker applied the same portable state-sovereignty reasoning the Massachusetts court used when it dismissed the DOJ suit in April. In Wisconsin, the Court dismissed the case with prejudice on Thursday, foreclosing any refiling. Wisconsin's case had already been narrowed to the Civil Rights Act of 1960 theory alone before the Court dismissed even that.
Across its remaining 47-state active caseload, the DOJ has now dropped its National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and Help America Vote Act (HAVA) claims entirely2. The NVRA, passed in 1993, established the federal voter registration framework; HAVA, passed in 2002, modernised election administration after the 2000 Florida recount. States use the NVRA and HAVA frameworks to register voters, administer polling, and maintain voter lists. Dropping both leaves the department relying solely on the Civil Rights Act of 1960, a provision designed to address systematic disenfranchisement of Black voters in the South before computerised voter files existed, and which no court has applied to compel a state to hand over a digitalised voter database to a federal agency.
The 9th Circuit Oregon appeal, argued on 19 May, remains the first appellate test of whether the pattern of district court dismissals holds at circuit level; no ruling has been issued as of 29 May. An adverse circuit ruling would set precedent for roughly 23 active cases in that circuit alone. Two of the administration's three original legal hooks are now gone from the active cases.
