A federal judge in Arizona blocked President Donald Trump’s administration from gaining access to the state’s voter rolls on Tuesday.
U.S. District Judge Susan Brnovich, a Trump appointee, dismissed a lawsuit by the Justice Department that sought access to the documents. Brnovich stated that the voter rolls are “not a document subject to request by the Attorney General,” and dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice.
The DOJ’s lawsuit had targeted Arizona Attorney General Adrian Fontes, demanding that he turn over the voter data.
“This moment is a win for voter privacy,” Fontes said in a statement. “I will never comply with illegal requests that put Arizona voters in harms way.”
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Arizona is now one of seven states that have rebuffed the Trump administration’s attempts to conduct voter record investigations. The data sought by the administration would include dates of birth, addresses, driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers.
Those states include Rhode Island, California, Massachusetts, Michigan and Oregon.
Meanwhile, at least 13 states have either complied or promised to comply with the Trump administration’s requests: Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming.
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The administration says it needs access to the data to ensure states are complying with federal election law, as well as to check the citizenship status of individuals on the voter rolls.
Tuesday’s ruling came the same week that the North Carolina State Board of Elections identified approximately 34,000 dead people on the state’s voter rolls following a comprehensive comparison with federal data.
Earlier this month, the NCSBE submitted over 7.3 million voter records to the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database as part of an initiative to strengthen the accuracy and integrity of the state’s voter registration list. The NCSBE clarified that the identification of deceased individuals on the state’s voter rolls does not necessarily indicate illegal votes were cast.
“While we expected to find some cases, this is higher than we anticipated,” Sam Hayes, the executive director of the State Board of Elections, said in a statement.
Fox News’ Alex Schemmel and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
