29MAY

Sixth Circuit rejects DOJ roll demand

2 min read

08:48UTC

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

Read story →

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Democracy Docket / voting-rights litigators

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