The Justice Department has now asked twenty-two federal courts to make states hand over their voter rolls, and twenty-two have said no. The latest came Friday, August 14, when U.S. District Judge Anne Traum in Nevada dismissed the department's case and denied its motion to compel the state's unredacted voter file [1]. On the same day, the full Sixth Circuit refused to revive the department's earlier loss in Michigan [2].
What the department wanted in Nevada was specific: the complete file, unredacted, including voters' birthdates, driver's license numbers, and Social Security numbers, sought under Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 [1]. Traum found no reason to grant it. 'Neither letter purported to allege facts showing a need for an investigation into Nevada's state election system,' she wrote, adding that the government had provided 'no basis - none' [1]. Democracy Docket identified her ruling as the 22nd consecutive district court to reject the campaign [1].
The Michigan track closed the same day. The Sixth Circuit denied the department's petition for en banc rehearing after fewer than a majority of judges voted to rehear the case, leaving the panel's earlier ruling against the department in place [2]. Judge Murphy, concurring, wrote that 'now is not the proper time' for the full court to step in [2].
Murphy's reasoning is the part worth reading closely, because it explains why the losses keep landing the same way. He described the department's defects as 'curable procedural problems,' pointing specifically to the wording of DOJ's letters to Michigan [2]. In other words, courts are not rejecting the idea that the government can ever examine voter records. They are rejecting the paperwork the department has actually filed, which so far has not alleged the facts that would justify the demand [1][2].
That distinction sets the stakes. The immediate winners are voters in Nevada and Michigan, whose sensitive identifiers stay put. The caveat is that a procedural loss is not a permanent one: Murphy's concurrence reads as a road map, suggesting the department could send a cleaner letter and return to court. For now the record is unambiguous. Twenty-two courts, one demand, zero grants [1][2].
