NEWARK – The United States District Court for the District of New Jersey granted a motion to intervene for the NAACP and a coalition of civil rights and advocacy organizations to participate as defendants in United States of America v. Caldwell. The lawsuit, brought by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), demanded that the State of New Jersey turn over unredacted, sensitive voter registration records, including names, addresses, birth dates, driver’s license numbers, and the last four digits of Social Security numbers.
The NAACP and other intervenors argue that the government seeks to weaponize the data by identifying certain categories of voters – mainly immigrants, people of color, and people with past criminal convictions – to challenge their right to vote. They contend that combining state and federal databases presents a serious risk of wrongly flagging legitimate voters who already face significant structural barriers to voting and civic life, including those who are vulnerable to unconstitutional or erroneous immigration enforcement in the current climate.
“The actions of this administration have nothing to do with preventing non-citizens from voting and everything to do with voter suppression,” said Anthony P. Ashton, NAACP Senior Associate General Counsel. “Gathering sensitive voter registration information from voters in New Jersey, and across the country, is part of a larger scheme to intimidate, discourage, and disenfranchise lawfully registered voters. We will continue to fight this administration’s attempts to undermine elections in our country.”
The successful motion was filed by the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice and Pashman Stein Walder Hayden, P.C., on behalf of the coalition and one impacted individual.