This article was originally published in The New Hampshire Union Leader

The American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire and League of Women Voters of New Hampshire plan to submit an amicus brief opposing the Trump administration’s lawsuit seeking access to New Hampshire’s statewide voter registration lists.

This as lawyers for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division file a motion opposing efforts by attorneys for New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan to have the lawsuit dismissed.

The lawsuit — for failure to produce their statewide voter registration lists at the government’s request — was filed in September in federal district court in New Hampshire, along with five other states — California, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, and Pennsylvania.

In August 2025, Scanlan rejected a second demand from the Justice Department for the state’s list of registered voters.

The government lawsuits claim the six states are violating the National Voter Registration Act, the Help America Vote Act and the Civil Rights Act by refusing to provide the department with the unredacted lists. The Justice Department maintained it wants the data to make sure states are complying with federal law that requires them to make efforts to clean their voter rolls.

The case was recently reassigned to Judge Joseph N. Laplante of the U.S. District Court of New Hampshire, after Judge Andrea Johnstone recused herself.

In their proposed amicus brief, LWVNH and the ACLU-NH support the state’s motion to dismiss, arguing that the DOJ’s demand for broad access to confidential voter data is unwarranted and threatens voter privacy.

The brief further explains that the lawsuit is part of a broader, nationwide effort to obtain voter roll information — one of several tactics advanced during the United States Department of Justice’s recent campaign targeting election administration practices.

“The League of Women Voters of New Hampshire is committed to protecting the private information of Granite State voters from federal overreach,” said Liz Tentarelli, president of the League of Women Voters of New Hampshire. “New Hampshire’s voter file contains highly sensitive personal data, and we are proud to support the state’s strong privacy protections against this federal fishing expedition. Efforts like this risk undermining public trust in our elections and in the institutions charged with safeguarding our democracy.”

“Since January 2025, the executive branch has repeatedly sought to insert itself into voting processes despite lacking constitutional or statutory authority to do so,” the brief says. “In this case, plaintiff claims it is entitled to unfettered access to New Hampshire voters’ sensitive data under the Civil Rights Act of 1960 (CRA), for the purported goal of assessing the state’s compliance with the list-maintenance procedures prescribed by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). Plaintiff’s purported justification for seeking this data makes little sense because it is entirely pretextual.

“The executive branch’s public statements and actions demonstrate that the true purpose of this request is not to assess a suspected violation of HAVA, or otherwise enforce federal law, but to amass the data of tens of millions of voters so it can expand its own role into election administration beyond constitutional limits.”

In response to Scanlan’s motion to dismiss, lawyers for the Trump administration said U.S. officials “engaged in repeated correspondence with Secretary Scanlan, requesting his cooperation in providing federal election records.”

“Those efforts were met by Secretary Scanlan’s refusal to produce records as mandated by federal law and necessary to evaluate compliance with federal election laws,” the motion says. “Movants have wholly failed to establish that there remains any ‘matter[] open for determination’ which would provide a basis for the motions to dismiss.

Attorneys for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) filed a brief recently supporting Scanlan’s efforts to have the lawsuit — dismissed, arguing that “a Department of Justice that cannot be forthright with state officials cannot be trusted” with the personal information of every registered voter in the Granite State, including nearly 270,000 registered Democrats.

The New Hampshire Legislature in 2003 created a law spelling out how the voter database is to be compiled, monitored and protected.

It contains a privacy provision that makes the documents not only secret but undiscoverable in a court case.

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