State election officials await a decision by a federal judge that could determine — at least initially — whether voter records containing personal and identifying information will have to be turned over to the U.S. Department of Justice.
U.S. District Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher said after about a 90-minute hearing on the issue in Baltimore Wednesday that a written decision would be forthcoming, but she did not provide a timeline.
The hearing followed federal demands that unredacted master voter lists from Maryland and other states be turned over to address allegations of inaccurate voter rolls and President Donald Trump’s repeated and unfounded claims over fraudulent elections.
Attorneys representing Maryland are asking Gallagher to dismiss the case.
“The department is trying to create a novel overseer role, a supervisory role over federal elections,” said Assistant Attorney General Daniel Kobrin, the attorney representing the Maryland State Board of Elections. “And it’s trying to do it on the basis of a statute that is 66 years old and was never intended to be used this way.”
But attorneys for the Justice Department argued federal law already grants them that authority. The laws, some dating back to the Civil Rights era and efforts to ensure voting rights for Black Americans, require states to collect specific records and turn them over on demand, the federal attorneys argued.
William Mohrman, senior counsel at the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said concerns about disclosure of private data were unwarranted.
“I think the court needs to remember this is a government-to-government dispute,” said Mohrman, who was recently hired by the agency and formally joined the Maryland case Tuesday. “We’re not talking about private individuals who are trying to keep their data private for themselves. They’ve already revealed it to the state of Maryland.”
Mohrman argued the data would be used as an auditing tool. The databases could be shared with other federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, to identify ineligible voters including undocumented immigrants.
He told the judge that there is no reason to believe the department “isn’t going to respect those privacy concerns. There’s federal privacy laws that are going to protect that.”
Mohrman is a Minnesota lawyer who represented officers accused in the police custody death of Geroge Floyd. He also joined a growing list of attorneys who worked on challenges to the 2020 election that have been hired within the Civil Rights Division, according to Democracy Docket.
Mohrman is also representing the department in a similar lawsuit in Georgia, according to federal court records.
State Election Administrator Jared DeMarinis told reporters outside the court building Wednesday that the federal government has no role in auditing state elections.
“If Congress wants to make the DOJ an auditor, then go through the federal government,” said DeMarinis, who is named in the lawsuit. “Let’s debate that in the House of Representatives and the Senate, and we’ll comply with that.”
Maryland is one of a handful of mostly Democratic states that refused the department’s demands and were then sued. So far, most of those lawsuits have been unsuccessful. About half a dozen of those are currently under appeal.
The district court hearing included a half-dozen outside groups that filed in support of the state. Just one organization — Maryland Election Integrity — filed a brief in support of the department.
The group was represented by C. Edward Hartman, an Annapolis-based attorney. Hartman represented 2022 Republican nominee for governor Dan Cox in his unsuccessful bid to block the early counting of mail-in ballots that year. Hartman also represented Maryland Election Integrity in an unsuccessful 2024 federal lawsuit against the state elections agency.
“You know, it’s obviously a very politically pervasive issue, right?” Hartman said outside the federal court building. “It’s the blue states that are denying and the red states that are complying … but when it comes down to a specific interpretation of the law, all that kind of falls aside, and that’s what we’re arguing today.”
Lawyers for organizations including Common Cause, the Democratic National Committee, Maryland/DC Alliance for Retired Citizens and Out for Justice argued to block the department’s access to the unredacted voter records.
Both sides are hoping for a quick decision from Gallagher.
DeMarinis said attorneys defending his agency’s refusal to comply did “a fantastic job as to providing the courts with reasons why the federal government should not have access to this list, and we again look forward to a very favorable ruling.”
In a brief exchange with reporters, Mohrman expressed similar optimism.
“I feel very good about how our arguments went this morning. The judge did a very good job, very gracious,” Mohrman said. “We certainly hope for a good result.”
Regardless of how Gallagher rules, an appeal is expected.
The Justice Department last year started asking, then demanding, that states turn over unredacted master voting records. Those databases contain extensive information on voters, including driver’s license and Social Security numbers, dates of birth and voting histories.
In July, Maryland State Board of Elections officials received just such a demand seeking data from November 2022 to November 2024.
In that letter, the department questioned the state’s efforts to purge duplicate and ineligible voters and raised allegations of voter lists that included people who are dead, convicted or undocumented.
The department also demanded information on “the number of voters identified as ineligible to vote” because they were a “non-citizen, … adjudicated incompetent” or had a felony conviction.
DeMarinis balked at the request.
On Wednesday, DeMarinis told reporters that the department has ulterior motives for the data.
“If they’re looking to just see about compliance, we can show you our procedures and our processes,” DeMarinis said. “You don’t need the (voter) rolls to do that. They have other motives behind this, and until they articulate those, I’m going to defend Maryland’s voters and their privacy.”