ATLANTA (AP) — A federal judge in Georgia on Friday dismissed a U.S. Justice Department lawsuit seeking voter information from the state, ruling that the federal government had searched in the wrong city.
US District Judge Ashley Royal found that the government should have sued Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in Atlanta, and not in a separate federal judicial district in Macon, where the secretary of state also has an office.
Royal dismissed the suit without prejudice, meaning the Justice Department can refile it. The department declined to comment Friday.
The Justice Department has now filed lawsuits against 24 states and the District of Columbia seeking voter information as part of its effort to collect detailed voting data, including birth dates and driver’s license and Social Security numbers. A federal judge in California dismissed the suit against that state on privacy grounds, while a judge in Oregon suggested he might dismiss the case there.
The Trump administration characterizes the lawsuits as an effort to ensure election security, and the Justice Department says states are violating federal law by refusing to provide voter lists and information.
Raffensperger was the rare Republican to reject the request, saying Georgia law prohibits the release of confidential voter personal information unless certain qualifications are met. Raffensperger argues that the federal government has not met those conditions. He says he shared the public portion of the voter registry and information about how Georgia removes ineligible or expired registrations in December.
“I always follow the law and follow the Constitution,” Raffensperger said in a statement Friday. “I will not break the oath I took to support the people of this state, no matter who or what forces me to do otherwise.”
The refusal to hand over the records has become an issue in Raffensperger’s run for governor in 2026. Raffensperger in January 2021 famously refused a request from President Donald Trump in a phone call to “find” enough votes to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 Georgia presidential election. Many Trump-loving Republicans still hold their grudges against Raffensperger.
The issue came up on Thursday in a state Senate committee hearing where several Republican state senators slammed Raffensperger for failing to comply, saying he could have done so legally. The committee voted along party lines to advance a resolution calling on Raffensperger to turn over the data and calling it “the latest example of a pattern of behavior by the secretary and his office to refuse oversight of his administration of Georgia elections.”
State Senator Randy Robertson, a Republican from Cataula who introduced the resolution, said the dismissal is “frustrating” because even if the Department of Justice tries the case again, the problem will take longer to resolve.
“As public officials we should all participate in any investigation conducted by a law enforcement agency,” Robertson told The Associated Press Friday.
Robertson is one of many Republican lawmakers backing Lt. Gov. Burt Jones over Raffensperger for the GOP gubernatorial nomination. Jones, who already has Trump’s endorsement for governor, was one of 16 state Republicans who signed a certificate that Trump had won Georgia and declared themselves as the “duly elected and qualified” electors of the state.