Institute and Others Ask Court to Throw Out Trump Administration’s Attempt to Seize New Jersey Voter Records
May 11, 2026
NEWARK – The New Jersey Institute for Social Justice and Pashman Stein Walder Hayden, P.C. (“Pashman Stein”) filed a Motion to Dismiss today in United States of America v. Caldwell on behalf of a coalition of civil rights and advocacy organizations, as well as one impacted individual, asking a federal court to throw out the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) lawsuit seeking to seize the private registration records of millions of New Jersey voters.
The motion, filed on behalf of NAACP, NAACP New Jersey State Conference, Salvation and Social Justice, AAPI New Jersey, Returning Citizens Support Group, Association of Black Women Lawyers of New Jersey, Garden State Bar Association, New Jersey Muslim Lawyers Association, People’s Organization for Progress and Edwin Ortiz, argues that the DOJ’s demand for unredacted voter files—including partial Social Security numbers, birth dates and home addresses— is a “blatant perversion” of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 (CRA).
“Everyone who cares about democracy should be alarmed when the federal government demands our personal information to be weaponized against us, especially those who have historically faced the greatest barriers to the ballot box,” said Henal Patel, Law & Policy Director at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice. “The government seeks to use a law which is meant to protect against racial discrimination in order to perpetuate it. We are confident the court will see this for what it is and dismiss this spurious case.”
The CRA was enacted in 1960 to protect Black voters from racial discrimination by authorizing the Attorney General to investigate claims of disenfranchisement.
The motion to dismiss argues that the DOJ is attempting to misuse that authority to create a centralized federal database intended to be weaponized to disenfranchise voters of color, immigrants and other marginalized communities.
“We are proud to work alongside the Institute on behalf of our clients to seek the dismissal of a lawsuit designed to carry out an illegal and anti-democratic seizure of New Jerseyans’ most sensitive information,” said CJ Griffin, Partner & Director of the Justice Gary S. Stein Public Interest Center at Pashman Stein Walder Hayden, P.C. “As long as the attacks on our democracy keep coming, we will continue to fight them off.”
While 12 states have complied with Department of Justice’s request for voter records, most have refused. Courts in California, Michigan, Oregon, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Arizona have dismissed the government’s lawsuits demanding these records, and the DOJ has appealed.
A copy of the motion to dismiss can be found here.
The coalition of civil rights and advocacy organizations and the impacted individual referenced above were granted the right to intervene in United States of America v. Caldwell on April 24.
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