Nevada pushes back against DOJ's lawsuit for unredacted voter rolls

McKenna Ross, Las Vegas Review-Journal on Jan 28, 2026

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LAS VEGAS — Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford asked a federal judge Wednesday to dismiss a Trump administration lawsuit that is trying to force Nevada to release an unredacted voter roll list to the federal government.

The administration targeted the state’s top elections official, Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, in a Dec. 11 lawsuit filed in the Nevada District Court — an action that increased the federal government’s pressure to obtain certain personal information of Nevada voters.

Department of Justice lawyers said the U.S. attorney general has sweeping powers to obtain the records, according to the original complaint. They argued the federal government needs that data to monitor compliance to federal election laws.

The Trump administration demanded a computerized voter registration list of the state’s nearly 2.2 million registered voters, including all fields of information associated with the registration record, according to Nevada’s motion to dismiss. But Nevada law says voter registration lists cannot include sensitive data deemed confidential, such as Social Security, driver’s license or identification card numbers.

Ford’s motion stated the DOJ first sought Nevada’s data in June and that the state provided the list without the sensitive information a month later. In August, the DOJ sent a follow-up letter reasserting its request for all fields of data, including date of birth, state driver’s license number or the last four digits of a voter’s Social Security number.

The Nevada attorney general’s office said they doubt the DOJ’s purpose for the data in a separate motion arguing against a possible court order to compel the data’s release. It points to news reports about the agency sharing the data with the Department of Homeland Security to support immigration enforcement-related actions.

“And while news reports and statements are suggestive of different or additional DOJ purposes, they are not conclusive,” according to a motion arguing against any court order to release the records. “Only discovery will permit Nevada to collect the admissible evidence that it would need to effectively contest whether DOJ has accurately represented the purpose for its demand for Nevada’s unredacted voter file.”

The attorney general’s office and the Justice Department declined to comment further on the pending litigation.

The Trump administration has filed similar lawsuits against 24 other states and Washington, D.C. On Monday, a federal judge in Oregon dismissed the Trump administration’s suit against the state, more than a week after a federal judge in California dismissed its lawsuit and concluded the federal government’s request was unprecedented and illegal, according to The Associated Press.

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