Congress created the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division in 1957 and authorized the federal government to seek court injunctions against efforts to interfere with the right to vote. Further empowered by the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) and other laws, the Division has worked to eliminate racial discrimination and protect the right to vote for almost 70 years. It helped stop North Carolina from implementing restrictions that a court said targeted Black voters “with almost surgical precision” and has compelled jurisdictions from New Jersey to California to provide bilingual ballot materials, among many other interventions over the years.
Even with decades of progress, voter suppression persists today, making robust enforcement of these statutes critical to ensuring all eligible voters can participate fully in the political process.
Under the Trump Administration, however, the Civil Rights Division has reversed course. On Jan. 22, 2025, Justice Department political appointees reportedly ordered a freeze on all new civil rights cases, stopping even the filing of complaints and settlements that had been approved internally after potentially lengthy investigations and negotiations. They later directed career attorneys to dismiss their pending cases, in most instances reportedly “without meeting with them and offering a rationale.” All but three career attorneys have resigned or been removed from the Division’s Voting Section.
The Voting Section has now dropped its claims in all salient pending cases. Individual voters and voting rights groups are left to litigate without the weight of the Justice Department on their side, while contending with a once-fringe legal theory that they should not be able to enforce the core of the VRA at all. Meanwhile, President Trump has set new priorities that will make it harder for eligible citizens to vote, and his Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon is redirecting the Voting Section’s work accordingly.
The Dismissed Cases
When Trump took office, the Civil Rights Division had pending legal challenges to state and local practices that made it harder to register to vote or to cast a ballot, as well as the use of district maps that diluted the voting strength of racial minorities. The following are the most prominent matters, all of which it has since dismissed.
Arizona Voting Restrictions: In 2022, the Justice Department sued Arizona over a new state law, HB 2492, that requires voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship (DPOC), such as a birth certificate or passport, to register to vote. About half of Americans don’t have a passport, and 9% do not have a birth certificate or similar DPOC readily available either. The numbers are higher for low-income Americans. And about one-third of voting-age women don’t have DPOC reflecting their current name.
HB 2492 renewed a legal battle that began nearly two decades earlier, when the state adopted a similar measure in 2004. The Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that Arizona’s 2004 DPOC law was preempted by the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), a federal law that requires states to “accept and use” a uniform federal form that allows Americans to register for federal elections so long as they attest to their citizenship under penalty of perjury. Rather than adhere to the federal rules for all elections, Arizona implemented a two-tiered system: people who provide DPOC can vote in state and federal elections, and people who do not can vote in federal elections only.
In HB 2492, the state imposed new restrictions on voters who use the federal form to register without DPOC and for whom the state cannot independently verify citizenship status using certain databases: those voters may not vote by mail, and they may no longer vote for president. They may vote only in person and only for their member of Congress. The law also imposed new restrictions on state-qualified voters: their registrations will be rejected if they do not include their place of birth, a piece of information not determinative of eligibility to vote (consider naturalized citizens and the noncitizen children of diplomats who are born on U.S. soil).
The Justice Department challenged these and other restrictions under the NVRA and the Civil Rights Act of 1964’s Materiality Provision, which bars states from rejecting voter registrations based on inconsequential omissions that do not call into question a voter’s qualifications. The suit was consolidated with separate actions filed by voters and voter engagement groups. A federal district court struck down the challenged provisions, and a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed in February 2025. Arizona and Republican intervenors have petitioned for the full Ninth Circuit to rehear the case. However, on Apr. 8, the Justice Department filed a motion asking the court to dismiss its claims.
Georgia Voting Restrictions: Georgia saw record high turnout in the 2020 election. In March 2021, the state enacted an omnibus election bill, SB 202, that curtailed several of the practices that contributed to increased voter participation. Among other measures, SB 202 prohibited election officials from mailing unsolicited ballot applications to any voter; reduced the period during which voters can apply for an absentee ballot; restricted the number and location of drop boxes and the hours during which ballots could be returned there; restricted the counting of certain provisional ballots; and made it a crime to provide food or water for voters waiting in line, both within 150 feet of polling stations and even within 25 feet of any voter farther back. Black voters disproportionately had used absentee voting and drop boxes, and Black churches and civic groups had distributed food and water to voters waiting for hours.
DOJ sued Georgia in June 2021. It alleged that the state enacted SB 202 with the intent to suppress Black voter participation in violation of Section 2 of the VRA, which prohibits any voting procedure that “results in a denial or abridgement of the right … to vote on account of race or color.” DOJ also intervened in a consolidated lawsuit brought by voting rights groups. In 2023, the district court temporarily blocked the criminalization of providing food or water within 25 feet of voters who are more than 150 feet from a polling station, but allowed most of SB 202 to go into effect while the lawsuit continued. The court held a trial in Apr. 2024 and its decision is pending.
In February 2025, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger asked U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to drop its case. Bondi directed the Civil Rights Division to dismiss its claims on Mar. 31, and it did so the next day.
Virginia Voter Purge: On Aug. 7, 2024, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin ordered a last-minute initiative to remove voters suspected of being noncitizens from the rolls before Election Day. However, under the NVRA, states cannot conduct systematic voter purges during the 90 days before a federal election. This is known as the Quiet Period. Its purpose is to prevent disenfranchisement; if mass purges are conducted too close to an election, there may not be time to fix mistakes. (The NVRA does not prevent removing individual voters who have become ineligible, such as due to death or a criminal conviction.) DOJ and private plaintiffs sued in October 2024 to stop the voter purge.
In addition to objecting to the purge’s timing, DOJ highlighted the harm it would do. Virginia officials used daily transfers of flawed DMV data to identify potential noncitizens. These included people who mistakenly checked a box stating they are not a citizen, even if they elsewhere affirmed their citizenship and even if the DMV had documentary evidence of their U.S. citizenship. The state compared that list to the voter rolls, considering it a match if the two entries contained as little common data as the same first and last names. Officials conducted no further research to determine whether the person in question was a citizen. The state also conducted a large data pull of people who had indicated in DMV transactions that they were U.S. citizens but had at some earlier time provided the agency with a noncitizen document, such as a green card. Despite the clear possibility that these people had since become naturalized, the state flagged them as possible noncitizens too. Officials sent all the suspected noncitizens a notice giving them 14 days to affirm their citizenship and, if they did not, canceled their registration.
Litigation revealed that many U.S. citizens—including naturalized citizens whose voter registrations were stamped “NEW CITIZEN” and lifelong Virginians who had voted before—were erroneously removed. On Oct. 25, 2024, the district court enjoined the purge and ordered the state to restore the 1,600 voters it had removed from the rolls. Virginia sought emergency relief from the Supreme Court, contesting the district court’s ruling on the merits and arguing that it would be disruptive to implement the court’s order so close to Election Day. The Supreme Court stayed the district court’s order without explanation.
On Jan. 28, 2025, the Justice Department voluntarily dismissed its case. Individual voters had intervened in the case to also challenge the purge program, and their suit continues.
Alabama Voter Purge: In September 2024, DOJ and private plaintiffs sued Alabama over Secretary of State Wes Allen’s attempt to purge 3,251 voters from the rolls 84 days before Election Day, alleging a violation of the NVRA’s Quiet Period. Allen assembled the purge list by identifying voters who had previously been issued alien registration numbers (routinely provided to immigrants) by the Department of Homeland Security. In announcing the purge, he acknowledged “it is possible” voters on the list had since become naturalized citizens. State officials later admitted the list contained at least 2,000 U.S. citizens. Nonetheless, Allen instructed local registrars to “inactivate” these voters, requiring them to re-register to be able to vote in the presidential election. He also referred all of them to the state’s attorney general for criminal investigation.
On Oct. 16, 2024, the district court found that Alabama “blew the deadline” for systematic removals under the NVRA. The court granted a preliminary injunction stopping the purge and requiring action to restore voters to the rolls.
On March 14, 2025, under new management, the Justice Department dismissed its claims. The private plaintiffs also dismissed their claims, declaring victory and vowing to take action again if the secretary of state tries to implement another unlawful purge program. For the Justice Department, however, voluntarily dismissing a case after obtaining preliminary relief, without any form of permanent settlement, was highly irregular. The Civil Rights Division’s political leadership made clear the Trump administration thought the lawsuit never should have been brought. The Division issued a press release titled “U.S. Department of Justice Dismisses Biden-Era Lawsuit Against Alabama in order to have more Secure Elections,” echoing Alabama’s narrative that its purge program was important to “ensure only citizens are voting” and stating that dismissing the case would “permit Alabama the time and space to develop a legal, efficient, and effective process to remove noncitizens from their voting roll.” The statement strongly suggests DOJ would not sue the state if it violates the NVRA’s voter purge parameters again.
Texas Redistricting: In December 2021, the Justice Department sued Texas over its new congressional and state House maps, arguing that they intentionally diluted the influence of voters of color. Texas grew by 4 million people between 2010 and 2020, picking up two congressional seats. People of color represented 95% of the growth. However, the state legislature drew two new seats with White-majority voting populations. It also eliminated a Latino opportunity district; over-concentrated voters of color into particular districts (known as “packing”); and cut others out of an urban core and attached them to far-away, rural, predominantly White counties (known as “cracking”). The state House map used similar tactics. In alleging purposeful racial vote dilution, DOJ noted that courts had struck down statewide maps in every Texas redistricting since 1970 and had found intentional discrimination multiple times.
On Jan. 27, 2025, the court on its own accord ordered DOJ attorneys on the case to state whether they intended to continue the litigation. The attorneys asked for more time and then, in March 2025, dropped all of their claims. Voting rights groups are still suing over the maps. Their trial began May 21, 2025, and is ongoing.
Louisiana Redistricting: Following the 2020 census, Louisiana drew a new congressional map in which only one of its six districts was majority-Black even though a third of the state’s population is Black and the state experiences racially polarized voting. In 2022, a district court preliminarily enjoined the use of the map, ruling that it likely violated the VRA by illegally diluting the influence of Black voters. The court ordered the state to draw a new map with two majority-Black districts. Louisiana did so, but it eschewed geographically compact options to avoid forcing out one of two Republican incumbents; instead, the legislature crafted a second majority-Black district that stretched 250 miles across the state. A group of self-styled “non-African American voters” then sued, arguing that the new map constituted an unconstitutional racial gerrymander because race was the predominant factor motivating the shape of the new majority-Black district. A different district court agreed. The state appealed to the Supreme Court.
Louisiana and the NAACP argue that the new map is lawful: the state must be able to draw a second majority-Black district to comply with the VRA, and the particular district they drew took its shape primarily due to partisan incumbency protection, not race.
In December 2024, the Justice Department filed a brief explaining that drawing a majority-minority district to comply with the Voting Rights Act does not itself establish that race predominated in violation of the Constitution. It also argued that the district court applied the wrong legal standard in deeming the new map an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. DOJ sought to participate in oral argument. However, four days after President Trump took office, the Justice Department told the Court its brief “no longer represents the position of the United States” and withdrew its request for argument time.
During oral argument, held on Mar. 24, three justices challenged the correctness or importance of the 2022 order enjoining the original map (a court order that is not currently before the Supreme Court), and another justice seemed to question the continuing need for the VRA’s prohibition on racial vote dilution. The Court’s decision is pending.
Houston County, Georgia, At-Large Elections: On Jan. 16, 2025, the Justice Department sued the Houston County Board of Commissioners in central Georgia, alleging that its system of at-large elections dilutes Black voting power in violation of the VRA. Black voters constitute 32% of the electorate and Black candidates have run as Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, but White voters vote sufficiently as a bloc to defeat them every time. Houston County has had only one Black commissioner since Reconstruction, last elected in 1988. Racial vote dilution like this is often remedied by replacing at-large elections with a system of single-member districts.
DOJ dropped its case on Mar. 24. Houston County voters intervened to pursue the case, and the local government has moved to dismiss their claims.
Hazleton, Pennsylvania, At-Large Elections: On Jan. 7, 2025, the Justice Department filed a similar suit against the city of Hazleton, Pennsylvania, over its at-large system for electing its five city council members. Hispanics make up 63% of the city’s residents and 43% of its citizen voting age population, but racially polarized voting and the at-large system have prevented them from electing their candidates of choice. All seven Hispanic candidates to run from 2014 to 2023 lost; no Hispanic person has ever served on the council. DOJ also pointed to evidence of possible racial hostility, including a city council member’s statement “If you want to keep breaking the rules and keep living like a slum or pig, go back to wherever you came from,” which some local residents took as anti-immigrant.
DOJ voluntarily dismissed its case on Apr. 24, 2025. No private plaintiffs had intervened or brought their own suit, so this matter is now closed.
One Remaining, but Paused, Case: DOJ has one still-pending VRA Section 2 case, filed on Jan. 15, 2025, in which it alleged intentional discrimination in redistricting by Fayette County, Tennessee. The county commission had multiple Black members in the past. During its 2021 redistricting process, however, the county rejected maps with majority-Black districts, against the advice of its redistricting attorney, and drew lines that diluted Black voting power. Since 2021, all five Black candidates to stand for election have lost, resulting in no Black commissioners among the 19 currently serving even though Black residents are 26% of the county’s voting age population. Last month, the Justice Department consented to a 150-day pause of the litigation. The county is considering adopting a new districting map.
The Impact of DOJ’s Withdrawal on Voting Rights
As discussed above, private plaintiffs are still litigating most of the cases DOJ dropped. However, DOJ’s withdrawal presents two serious problems for voting rights enforcement.
First, the Civil Rights Division’s Voting Section brought unique resources, expertise, and weight to the litigation. Many of its attorneys had decades of experience, through Democratic and Republican administrations. They had seen voter suppression in all its forms over the years, and they understood the highly complex and evolving doctrines involved in proving VRA and NVRA claims. In addition, DOJ’s involvement in a case signaled the seriousness of the allegations to defendants, judges, and the public. For these reasons, its disappearance could slow momentum in some of these lawsuits.
Second, defendants are now arguing that there is no “private right of action” under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, meaning that only DOJ can enforce the statute. If they are right, any and all Section 2 claims by voters and voting rights groups — including in the cases discussed above — would have to be dismissed. DOJ’s absence raises the stakes of such a ruling dramatically. If private plaintiffs can’t sue, and DOJ won’t, no one will be enforcing the core of the VRA.
This legal theory gained steam after two Supreme Court justices seemed to endorse it in a 2022 concurrence. In Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, the Court made certain Section 2 violations harder to prove. Justice Gorsuch wrote separately, joined by Justice Thomas, to note that the Court since 1980 had “assumed” but “never decided” that private parties could sue under Section 2. He called it an “an open question.” Perhaps they could not.
That conclusion would run headlong into a wall of text, history, and precedent. The VRA contains references to the ability of “an aggrieved person” and a “party, other than the United States,” to initiate proceedings “to enforce the voting guarantees of the fourteenth or fifteenth amendment.” The House and Senate reports accompanying the law’s 1982 reauthorization explicitly state Congress’s intent “that citizens have a private cause of action to enforce their rights under Section 2” and have had that right “since 1965.” Private parties have filed over 400 Section 2 lawsuits since 1982, far more than DOJ. Congress was well aware of the plethora of private suits when, in 2006, it again reauthorized the statute without blocking them. Plaintiffs have relied even more heavily on Section 2 since the Supreme Court in 2013 disabled a separate provision that blocked discriminatory laws before they went into effect.
Nevertheless, in 2023, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals took up Gorsuch’s suggestion and ruled that only DOJ could enforce Section 2. This month, that court held that private plaintiffs couldn’t use another statute, 42 U.S.C. § 1983, to enforce Section 2’s prohibitions either.
With DOJ off the field, these decisions render the VRA’s prohibition on racial vote suppression currently inoperative in the seven states covered by the Eighth Circuit: Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Defendants are making the same argument in other parts of the country. Before long the question could reach the Supreme Court, which could decide the question for the entire nation.
New Federal Priorities
Two weeks after her confirmation, Assistant Attorney General Dhillon emailed new mission statements to Division career staff, directing them to pursue cases implementing President Trump’s executive orders. Among them is EO 14248, Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections, which makes combating voter fraud a top priority—even though such fraud is exceedingly rare. (President Trump continues to argue that the 2020 election, which he lost, was rigged. Dhillon has done the same. A wealth of evidence and legal judgments have debunked their claims.)
Accordingly, the Voting Section’s mission is now “to ensure free, fair, and honest elections unmarred by fraud, errors, or suspicion.” It will work with DHS “to share database information upon request for accurate voter registration list maintenance,” a reference to voter purges, and “ensure that only American citizens vote in US federal elections.” The statement reiterates “preventing illegal voting, fraud, and other forms of malfeasance and error” as priorities. Although it cites the Voting Rights Act as a statutory authority, the mission statement contains no reference to combating racial discrimination.
EO 14248 directs other strategies that would suppress voter participation. It purports to require the independent Election Assistance Commission to alter the federal voter registration form (at issue in the Arizona case discussed above) to make voters submit DPOC such as a passport or birth certificate—documents that 21 million voting-age American citizens don’t have—and it requires federal agencies to “assess” the citizenship of public assistance recipients before providing them a voter registration form as required by the NVRA. A federal court preliminarily enjoined these parts of Trump’s EO last month. Meanwhile, Trump’s allies in the House recently passed the SAVE Act to legislate an even stricter DPOC requirement (even REAL ID driver’s licenses wouldn’t count) and require voters to provide that DPOC in person, effectively ending online and mail-in voter registration.
Trump’s EO also takes aim at the seventeen states (plus DC, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands) that count mail ballots postmarked by Election Day and received within a certain period afterward. It cites a poorly reasoned case from the Fifth Circuit, which held that the federal statute setting the Tuesday after the first Monday of November as “the day of the election” means that ballots must be not only cast but also received by that date. The order directs DOJ to “take all necessary action” to apply that logic in the rest of the country. The Voting Section likely would lead this legal campaign.
Another executive order directs agencies to deprioritize enforcement of disparate impact liability. Disparate impact is the doctrine that facially neutral policies are discriminatory if they disproportionately harm people based on race (or another protected characteristic) and if that disproportionate harm can’t be justified. Congress has enacted disparate impact liability in several civil rights statutes. The Supreme Court has validated the approach. Trump’s EO nonetheless asserts that disparate impact is unconstitutional because it requires decision-makers “to consider race” (true, insofar as one must pay attention to disparities to make a judgment about discrimination) and “engage in racial balancing” (a misrepresentation of taking action to prevent unjustified disparities).
Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act prohibits not just intentionally discriminatory voting rules, but also those that “result[]” in vote denial or dilution based on race. Section 2 “results” claims differ from disparate impact claims in important ways—VRA plaintiffs must adduce evidence in certain enumerated categories concerning past and present discrimination—but the statute may still draw this administration’s ire. DOJ might not be content to have dropped its own lawsuits. The agency could intervene in other plaintiffs’ cases to argue that the Constitution permits only intentional discrimination claims, or that Section 2 results claims should be even harder to prove. If courts agreed, state and local governments would be able to get away with much more voter suppression.
The reorientation of the Voting Section in these ways, however, could be hindered by dramatic staff turnover. The number of its career attorneys reportedly is down from around 30 to just three. Political appointees reassigned the section’s career chief, six managers, and at least one line attorney to an office that handles employment discrimination complaints made internally by DOJ employees. A seventh manager retired. Other attorneys appear to have accepted the deferred resignation program or quit. These losses are part of an exodus of over 250 attorneys, 70% of the total on staff, from the Civil Rights Division. The Division is reportedly now asking attorneys in its fair housing office to work voting cases. Very likely, the Department will have to hire new attorneys to advance its new agenda.
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The Trump Administration’s retreat from voting rights enforcement and efforts to tighten access to the ballot mark a rupture with the Civil Rights Division’s traditional role. Protection of voting rights will now fall even more heavily on private plaintiffs, including the voter engagement groups and legal nonprofits that have consistently enforced Congress’s anti-discrimination mandates. State governments must also do their part: legislatures can pass state versions of the Voting Rights Act, and state attorneys general can file affirmative litigation to protect the vote and help defend against new federal crackdowns that violate the law. Each of these actors will be crucial to protecting the machinery of democracy in the coming years.
