U.S. District Court Judge Richard Andrews dismissed a U.S Dept. of Justice case aimed at obtaining voter information for Delaware voters on Tuesday.
Back-and-forth between the DOJ and state election office started in July 2025.
The DOJ wrote to Delaware’s election commissioner, Anthony Albence. During the exchange, it asked for an up-to-date copy of Delaware's electronic voter rolls, including: full name, birthday, address, driver's license number, or the last four digits of a social security number.
Albence declined to share the state’s complete voter rolls. And the DOJ filed a complaint against him in December 2025.
The federal department said it needed the records to oversee enforcement of the Civil Rights Act III, which aims to protect individuals' equal access to protection under the law and authorizes the attorney general to take enforcement actions that desegregate public spaces.
In its communications to Albence, the DOJ said that its enforcement of the CRA III applied to noncitizen voting.
Title III does require state election officials to keep records of federal elections for nearly two years. The requirement was created to prevent election officials from destroying Black citizens' voter registration applications, which were targeted throughout the 20th century through mail campaigns and deletion of records.
To give the federal government a way to prevent this, CRA III requires that state election officers retain, "...all records and papers which come into (the official's) possession relating to any application, registration, payment of poll tax, or other act requisite to voting in such election."
This language is the crux of the dismissal from Judge Andrews, an Obama appointee. The virtual voter rolls are generated by Delaware, not something that "comes into its possession."
This can be considered a narrow judgement. But Delaware’s case joins nearly 30 similar cases where judges found the DOJ’s claims to other state’s voter lists unconvincing.
Andrews agreed with other judges who say that under that argument, the DOJ can access voter registration documents but not state-generated electronic records.
