Trump-appointed judge slams door on DOJ as court losses pile up days ahead of midterms
A federal judge appointed by President Donald Trump has handed his administration another loss in its quest to tackle alleged illegal voting ahead of the midterm elections.District Judge David Barlow...
By Fox News · Fox News
A federal judge appointed by President Donald Trump has handed his administration another loss in its quest to tackle alleged illegal voting ahead of the midterm elections. District Judge David Barlow on Friday dismissed a case the Department of Justice brought against Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, a Republican, demanding that she turn over state voter data. The administration sought to compel Henderson, the state’s top election official, to hand over a complete list of Utah voters, including their names, birthdays and addresses as well as their driver's license numbers or the last four digits of their Social Security numbers. The Justice Department’s defeat in Utah is one of more than 25 voter-roll litigation defeats the Trump administration has suffered since beginning its campaign to address alleged illegal voting. TRUMP-APPOINTED FEDERAL JUDGE TOSSES DOJ LAWSUIT SEEKING ARIZONA VOTER DATA Federal lawyers initially sued Henderson, arguing that the Civil Rights Act of 1960 requires her to make certain voting records that "come into" her possession available for federal inspection. Barlow, however, cited a ruling from the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals that found "an ordinary English speaker would not say that she has come into possession of something that she created, established and maintained," a reference to the broad dataset the DOJ was seeking to obtain. The DOJ countered that line of argument by asserting that, even if the precise language of the law didn’t require the data to be surrendered, the purpose of the law in question was to serve as enforcement tool for federal election laws, so it would make little sense to interpret it as excluding the statewide voter-registration database that states use to carry out voter-list maintenance. FEDERAL JUDGE BLOCKS DOJ ACCESS TO NJ VOTER ROLLS AMID STATEWIDE CONTROVERSY Barlow rejected this line of argument, stating that judges have "no warrant to elevate vague invocations of statutory purpose over the words Cong…