Judge Chutkan bars DHS and DOJ from sending more noncitizen voter lists to election officials

A federal judge in Washington has barred the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department from sending more lists of people they say are noncitizen voters to state and local election officials. U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan issued the preliminary injunction on Monday, November 2, 2026, the day before the midterm elections.

"Election day is tomorrow, and in many states voting is already underway," Chutkan wrote in a 30-page memorandum opinion. She found that the groups challenging the lists were likely to show the transfers broke the federal Privacy Act and were not authorized by any statute.

The order does not stop federal prosecutions. It also leaves in place the government's citizenship-check system that states can query, known as SAVE. What it blocks is the practice of sending unrequested lists of names to the officials who run registration, handle ballots and count votes.

What the order says

The two-page order enjoins and stays the defendants "from further disclosing, transmitting, or releasing data purporting to constitute lists of individual potential or actual non-citizen voters or registered voters." The bar covers transfers to "any State, county, municipal, or other local official, employee, or officer responsible for administering voter registration, issuing or processing ballots, verifying signatures, or tabulating or certifying votes."

The order has two exceptions. The departments may still respond to an inquiry through the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system, which states use to check a person's citizenship or immigration status. And the order does not stop them from "prosecuting violations of federal law."

Chutkan ordered the government to file a status report within 24 hours confirming compliance and naming a senior official responsible for it. The plaintiffs must post a $1 bond by November 4.

Who sued and why

The case is League of Women Voters v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, No. 1:26-cv-03602, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. It was filed on October 15. An amended complaint on October 28 added the Justice Department and Attorney General Todd Blanche as defendants. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin is also named.

The motion that led to the ruling was brought by two of the plaintiffs, the League of United Latin American Citizens and the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Chutkan held a hearing on October 31. The plaintiffs are represented by Democracy Forward and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

The plaintiffs call the program the "Voter Data Transmission Policy." According to the opinion, they allege the government has gathered voter lists "from at least 47 states, containing sensitive personal information, including social security numbers, dates of birth, voting history, political-party affiliation, and more." They allege the government pairs those records with commercial data and federal databases to produce lists of people it says are noncitizens.

Democracy Forward says internal DHS documents show that, as of June 2026, Homeland Security Investigations "had ingested 50.6 million records obtained through the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and another 48.4 million records from other sources." The country has about 174 million registered voters, the group says.

The lists in practice

The opinion describes how the lists reached election offices. On October 13, the Justice Department hand-delivered to Los Angeles County a "thumb drive contain[ing] the sensitive and personal identifiable information of over 20,000 individuals" it said were likely noncitizens sent mail ballots. It gave the county 48 hours to review the list. According to the opinion, which draws on an October 28 ruling by a federal judge in Los Angeles in a related case, only 7,035 of those records "had addresses in Los Angeles County."

0

5,000

10K

15K

20K

Records on the list20,000

Records with Los Angeles County addresses7,035

Records on the listRecords with Los Angeles County addresses

Source: Memorandum opinion, LWV v. DHS (D.D.C. Nov. 2, 2026)

Show the numbers

Group	Records
Records on the list	20,000
Records with Los Angeles County addresses	7,035

On October 23, the departments sent letters to every county in California. On October 26, the Justice Department sent voter data to Washington state and asked officials to investigate and segregate the ballots of listed voters. That letter said the department "anticipate[s] imminently receiving a second list of individuals believed to be noncitizens" that it would send before Election Day.

The opinion also cites a past error. After DHS said 15,903 noncitizens were registered to vote in Nevada, Chutkan wrote, a manual review by the state found that "every single individual was a United States citizen." Democracy Forward says DHS later cut its Nevada figure to 185 before the state found all were citizens.

According to Democracy Docket, the Justice Department challenged about 21,000 voters in California and targeted about 400 in Washington. The opinion also notes a report that the district attorney in San Luis Obispo County, California, is investigating the registrations of 63 suspected noncitizens.

What the government argued

The government opposed any order. In its October 31 brief, it said the plaintiffs "have created an imaginary 'policy'" in an effort "to manufacture a cause of action." It described the actions as "law enforcement efforts by federal authorities to identify non-citizens who may have cast, or may be imminently casting, votes in the upcoming federal election in violation of an explicit federal law that prohibits such votes."

Those efforts, the brief said, are "administration wide efforts to ensure voting integrity" and not a single final agency action that courts can review under the Administrative Procedure Act. It pointed to Executive Order 14248, which President Donald Trump signed in March 2025, as evidence the priority was "known to all."

The government also said the groups lacked standing. It argued that their members' fears were "nothing more than a generalized grievance based on speculation." It said any harm to a voter depended on "a speculative chain of hypotheticals." On authority, it said that "Congress expressly directed the Federal Government in 18 U.S.C. § 611 to ensure that noncitizens do not vote in federal elections." And it said "the government's compelling interest in combating voter fraud significantly outweighs Plaintiffs' speculative and non-existent injuries."

How Chutkan ruled

Chutkan rejected each of those arguments at this early stage.

Standing. She found LULAC likely had standing on three grounds: harm to the group itself, harm to its members, and lost information. She cited a declaration from Gustavo Gutierrez Gomez, a naturalized citizen in Washington state and LULAC member. "I am afraid that my name may appear on one of the government's lists," he said. "I do not know if my name is on the list, and I don't know what to do if it does appear on there." She found EPIC likely had standing based on lost information.

Final agency action. The government said a Justice Department flowchart describing the process was only press material. Chutkan disagreed, relying on a recent appeals court decision that found final agency action based on illustrated flowcharts.

Statutory authority. Chutkan wrote that 18 U.S.C. 611 makes it unlawful for a noncitizen to vote in a federal election. But she found that the statute "contains no language authorizing the broad program of bulk transmission of sensitive voter data for the purposes of intervening in state election procedures."

Privacy Act. The Privacy Act generally requires an agency to publish a system of records notice before sharing personal records in new ways. Chutkan found that the government did not claim to have published one covering these transfers. She quoted another judge in the same court: "it is flatly inconsistent with the text, structure, and purpose of the Privacy Act for an agency to initiate a major new data-sharing program affecting the sensitive data of millions of Americans" without such a notice. She also found the law's exception for law enforcement requests unlikely to apply, because it requires a written request from the head of an agency specifying the records sought, and the government identified none.

Balance of harms. Chutkan acknowledged that the public "indisputably has a compelling interest in preserving the integrity of [the] election process." But she wrote that the government did "not point to any record evidence that there will be significant fraud in the upcoming elections." She concluded that the equities "weigh heavily in favor of protecting the privacy and voting rights of the millions of Americans whose voter data Defendants have already collected."

Timing. The Supreme Court's Purcell v. Gonzalez decision warns federal courts against changing election rules close to an election. The government cited the same case for a different point: "Confidence in the integrity of our electoral processes is essential to the functioning of our participatory democracy." Chutkan found that Purcell's caution about late changes favored the plaintiffs. Because more transfers could "cause widespread confusion among voters and election officials," she wrote, "the Purcell principle counsels for retaining the states' status quo and enjoining further voter data transmissions."$

1. 2026-10-13Justice Department delivers list of over 20,000 names to Los Angeles County
2. 2026-10-15Voting rights and privacy groups sue DHS
3. 2026-10-23Letters sent to every California county
4. 2026-10-26Justice Department sends voter data to Washington state
5. 2026-10-28Amended complaint adds the Justice Department and Attorney General Blanche
6. 2026-10-29LULAC and EPIC move for emergency relief
7. 2026-10-31Government files opposition; Chutkan holds hearing
8. 2026-11-02Chutkan grants preliminary injunction and stay
9. 2026-11-04Deadline for plaintiffs' $1 bond

Source: Memorandum opinion, LWV v. DHS (D.D.C. Nov. 2, 2026)

How this fits with other rulings

Chutkan's order is one of several by federal judges in the days before the election. On November 2 the Supreme Court declined the Justice Department's request to force California to segregate ballots of listed voters, and Chief Judge James E. Boasberg barred federal segregation demands in a case brought by immigrant advocates. 567politics has covered the Justice Department's contempt request in that case and the earlier Ninth Circuit ruling on California ballots.

In San Francisco, the full Ninth Circuit voted late Monday to rehear a separate case and vacate a stay, leaving in force an order that bars federal officials from threatening election workers over listed voters' ballots. Chutkan's ruling differs in focus. It concerns the data itself, not the warnings sent with it.

According to Reuters, the Justice Department had argued in court that the letters were part of enforcing the ban on noncitizen voting rather than a separate policy. The Epoch Times reported that DHS and the Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment on the ruling.

Supporters of the federal effort say states should not count ballots from people the government believes are ineligible. In an October interview with CBS's 60 Minutes, quoted by the Election Law Blog, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said: "There are literally thousands of them out there that we are looking at." Critics, including the plaintiffs, say the lists sweep in citizens and frighten eligible voters, especially naturalized citizens.

What comes next

The government's compliance report is due within 24 hours of the order, which puts it on Election Day. The government may appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. As of early Tuesday, 567politics had found no notice of appeal on the public docket. The case will continue toward a decision on the merits, including the plaintiffs' request that the government delete voter data it has already collected. That request was not decided in this ruling.

Our United States elections guide tracks today's races.

How we reported this

This story is based on Judge Chutkan's order and memorandum opinion, the government's opposition brief and the plaintiffs' filings and statements. We also used reporting from Reuters, Democracy Docket, the Epoch Times and the Election Law Blog. Figures on records collected come from the plaintiffs' lawyers and are described as such. 567politics found no representative poll that asks specifically about federal transfers of voter lists to election officials. The site's government datasets tool has no dataset relevant to this case. Its funding tool has no verified Federal Election Commission snapshot for President Trump or Secretary Mullin, so this story makes no claims about their campaign funding. Our methodology and editorial standards explain how we choose and check sources.

Differing perspectives

Should federal agencies send state and local election officials lists of registered voters they believe are noncitizens?

Each position is summarized as its supporters make it, with equal weight and in alphabetical order. A summary is not an endorsement; the evidence for each is weighed in the story above.

• Keep sending the lists to election officials

  Who holds it: U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice, Attorney General Todd Blanche

  The government says the lists are part of law enforcement efforts to find noncitizens who may be voting in violation of federal law, a priority it has stated since early 2025. It argues there is no single reviewable policy, that the challengers rely on speculation about harm to voters, and that federal law directs the government to keep noncitizens from voting. It says its interest in preventing voter fraud outweighs the injuries the groups claim.

  In their words: Government's opposition brief, Oct. 31, 2026 ↗

• Stop the transfers

  Who holds it: LULAC, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the League of Women Voters, with Democracy Forward

  The challengers say the government has pulled together voter records from at least 47 states, matched them with commercial and federal data, and sent error-prone lists of supposed noncitizens to election officials without the notice the Privacy Act requires. They say no statute authorizes the transfers, that past lists wrongly flagged citizens, and that the program frightens eligible voters, especially naturalized citizens, and should stop.

  In their words: Democracy Forward case page ↗