ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Senior District Court Judge Judith Herrera ruled today that the Trump Administration cannot compel New Mexico to turn over the unredacted portions of its Statewide Voter Registration List. New Mexico is the 14th state to win dismissal of a Trump Administration lawsuit seeking a state’s unredacted voter rolls.
“New Mexico voters can rest easy knowing their personal information will stay out of this administration’s hands,” said Attorney General Raúl Torrez. “The court’s ruling makes clear that DOJ demanded our voters’ private records without a shred of evidence to justify it. New Mexico’s elections are administered with integrity, and we will keep fighting to keep the federal government out of our voters’ private information.”
The suit followed a 2025 directive from President Trump under which the U.S. Department of Justice sought New Mexico’s full voter list, including partial Social Security numbers and other information state law requires the Secretary of State’s office to redact before public release. New Mexico had already given DOJ the public version of the list.
Judge Herrera granted New Mexico’s motion to dismiss, holding that DOJ’s demand letter failed to meet a mandatory legal prerequisite: Section 10107 of the Civil Rights Act requires federal officials to state both the purpose and the factual basis for a records demand before suing to compel compliance. The court found DOJ’s letter offered no basis whatsoever, and noted it was nearly identical to a letter a court had already rejected in a similar case against Arizona. The court dismissed the complaint with prejudice, ruling that amendment would not cure the defect since the problem lay in DOJ’s original demand, not the pleading.
The New Mexico Department of Justice argued the case on behalf of the Secretary of State’s office, defending the privacy protections state law affords New Mexico’s more than 1.4 million registered voters.
Today’s ruling follows months of escalating federal pressure on states after revelations that federal agencies were considering using state voter data for immigration enforcement and criminal investigations, purposes never authorized by Congress. A federal judge in West Virginia dismissed a similar DOJ suit yesterday. With today’s decision, the Trump Administration has now lost 14 consecutive court cases seeking unredacted state voter rolls.