Springfield, IL (CAPITOL NEWS ILLINOIS) – Eighteen former U.S. Department of Justice attorneys filed a brief in federal court this week opposing the Trump administration’s lawsuit that seeks access to sensitive personal information about every registered voter in Illinois.

In a friend-of-the-court brief filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Springfield, the attorneys — including many who served in both Democratic and Republican administrations — argue the Department of Justice has no legal authority to demand the information.

They also accuse the agency of concealing its real purpose for seeking the data, which they argue is “to enable the federal government to conduct its own list maintenance to discover whether noncitizens or undocumented immigrants are registered to vote.”

‘Holy trinity of Identity theft’

Illinois is among 29 states and Washington, D.C., that are being sued for access to their unredacted voter registration rolls. Those databases include not just the names and addresses of every registered voter in those jurisdictions but also their dates of birth, driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers.

“The holy trinity of identity theft, as I’ve called it,” David Becker, one of the former DOJ attorneys who signed the brief, said during a media briefing Tuesday.

According to the Brennan Center, federal judges in California, Oregon and Michigan have ruled that the DOJ cannot force states to turn over voter lists as of Feb. 26. No judges have ruled in favor of the DOJ. 

Becker is also the founder and executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that conducts elections research and works with election officials around the country.

Becker said he and the other attorneys have filed similar briefs in most of the ongoing lawsuits seeking access to sensitive voter information in other states. He said while it is not common for former DOJ attorneys to intervene in cases against their former employer, it is also not unprecedented.

“I don’t go around looking for places to disagree with the Department of Justice. I’m much happier when I think the Department of Justice is looking out for all of us and enforcing the law as it should be,” he said. “But in these cases, we needed to point out how the department’s efforts to seize sensitive voter data from every American voter from the states that hold that sensitive data, that have state laws that protect that data, how that was unprecedented.”

History of the lawsuit

The Justice Department first requested the information from the Illinois State Board of Elections in July 2025, arguing it needed the data to determine whether Illinois was complying with federal laws that require states to maintain accurate and up-to-date voter registration files. That includes taking steps to periodically purge the rolls of the names of voters who have died, moved or who are not legally eligible to vote.

The state board, however, has so far declined to hand over the information. Instead, in August, it provided DOJ with a partially redacted data file — the same file it makes available to political parties and campaign committees — that only includes partial home addresses and does not include driver’s license or partial Social Security numbers.

In December, after a series of emails in which DOJ continued to demand the information, the board of elections  filed suit in federal court.

Several other organizations have also intervened in the case to oppose the administration’s efforts to obtain the data. Those include the Illinois AFL-CIO, the Illinois Alliance for Retired Americans, the Illinois Federation of Teachers, Common Cause and the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.

No hearings or oral arguments have been scheduled in the case.

 

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.