Federal judge dismisses Justice Department suit for Utah’s full voter list

U.S. District Judge David Barlow on Friday, Oct. 23, 2026, dismissed with prejudice the Justice Department’s lawsuit seeking Utah’s complete statewide voter registration list from Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, the state’s chief election officer. He also denied the department’s motion to compel production of the list.¹

The judge ruled that the list falls outside Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960, the basis of the complaint’s single count. That law requires election officers to keep registration-related records that “come into” their possession and produce them on the attorney general’s written demand. Barlow wrote that the phrase means receiving something from elsewhere, while Utah law directs the lieutenant governor to “develop, manage, and maintain” the list. He also found that treating a constantly updated database as a record that must be preserved unaltered would put the 1960 law in potential conflict with the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act, which require states to keep their lists current.¹

Amending the complaint would be futile, the order says. The court did not reach the defendants’ other arguments, including whether the department stated a proper basis and purpose for its demand, whether Utah’s privacy laws permit redactions and whether the department complied with the Privacy Act.¹

How the dispute began

According to the order, the department asked Henderson for the list on July 15, 2025, and she provided the public version, with redactions. An Aug. 14, 2025, letter cited the Civil Rights Act and asked for all fields, including dates of birth and driver’s license numbers or the last four digits of Social Security numbers. On Dec. 2, 2025, the department sent a proposed memorandum of understanding that it said addressed privacy and security concerns; the order says Henderson has not signed it or produced the unredacted list.¹

The department filed the suit, No. 2:26-cv-00166, on Feb. 26, 2026. The NAACP, its Tri-State Conference of Idaho, Nevada, and Utah, and the League of Women Voters of Utah joined as defendants, and the Democratic National Committee filed a friend-of-the-court brief, the docket shows.²¹

The responses

“We appreciate Judge Barlow’s ruling dismissing the Department of Justice’s lawsuit,” Henderson said in a statement, adding that her office “will continue to uphold the rule of law,” Utah News Dispatch and Gephardt Daily reported.³⁴ She also posted “0-27” on social media, a reference to the department’s losses in similar suits, Utah News Dispatch reported.³

Neither outlet reported a Justice Department response to the ruling.³⁴ Gephardt Daily reported that the department notified Henderson in September that she was under investigation over compliance with federal election laws, and that a Sept. 4 letter warned her to preserve election records; the department called such preservation letters standard litigation practice.⁴

Similar suits

The department has sued 30 states and Washington, D.C., for voter files, and 26 of those suits had been dismissed as of Oct. 16, according to a Brennan Center for Justice tracker, which also says the department settled and dropped its case against Oklahoma.⁵ Barlow’s order cites 26 decisions by other federal courts in similar cases, from the same 25 states and D.C., and lists 19 that reached the same conclusion about the scope of Title III. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit upheld the Michigan dismissal and declined rehearing by the full court, with two judges dissenting from that denial. Most of the other decisions are on appeal, the order shows.¹

What the records do not show

• Whether the Justice Department will appeal. As of the order, the department had not asked to amend its complaint.¹
• What the Sept. 4 letter said in full; it is not in the court records reviewed for this story.⁴
• The order does not decide whether the underlying information county clerks send the lieutenant governor would be covered by Title III; it says that question was not before the court.¹