The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals should affirm the district court’s decision to dismiss the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) lawsuit against Michigan for the state’s refusal to turn over its voter rolls, according to an amicus brief CREW filed on behalf of a bipartisan group of nine former secretaries of state from across the country: Mary Estill Buchanan, Miles Rapoport, Ben Ysursa, Joan Anderson Growe, John Gale, Phil Keisling, Kathy Boockvar, Leigh Chapman and Sam Reed.

Following the district court’s decision in February 2026, the DOJ filed an emergency appeal in March, making it the first appeal out of the three cases it has lost trying to gain access to state voter rolls. 

The Constitution gives states, not the federal government, the primary responsibility of regulating and administering elections, prioritizing states’ accountability to voters. As the Elections Clause lays out, state officials’ proximity to local needs make them well-positioned to regulate and administer elections. As amici are uniquely situated to know, state election administrators’ expertise about local election procedures surpasses that of the president. The Constitution simply does not authorize the president to act as a check on a state legislature’s regulation of elections without clear authorization from Congress. 

In addition to this constitutional mandate, the National Voter Registration Act and Help America Vote Act unambiguously confirm that states have the authority over voter roll list maintenance, not federal agencies, meaning that the DOJ cannot conduct voter roll list maintenance on behalf of the states. 

Michigan voters have entrusted their personal information—such as their driver’s license number, Social Security number, address, phone number—to the state, not to the federal government. The DOJ’s demands for this information violates the Privacy Act, which restricts a state’s ability to share sensitive information with federal agencies. Passed by Congress after the Watergate and COINTELPRO scandals, the Privacy Act sought to prevent the federal government from creating national data banks that would consolidate and store the personal data of Americans at separate agencies. 

These reasons are exactly why the appeals court must affirm the district court’s dismissal of the DOJ’s lawsuit against Michigan and allow the state to retain its voter rolls in accordance with the Constitution and federal law. 

Amicus brief

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