The Department of Justice acknowledged in court Thursday that it plans to share voter registration data it gets from states with the Department of Homeland Security, so that the data can be run through a U.S. citizenship check housed at DHS.
The disclosure came during a federal court hearing in Rhode Island. The state is one of more than two dozen that have been sued by the DOJ for rejecting the department's request for sensitive voter data.
The admission was first reported by CBS News. The Rhode Island secretary of state's office on Friday confirmed the account with NPR, but had no further comment. A transcript of the court proceedings was not yet available. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to NPR's request for comment.
Last year, the Trump administration overhauled a DHS data system known as SAVE into a controversial citizenship lookup tool that can use a person's name, date of birth and Social Security number to verify citizenship. Over the past year, federal officials have been urging states to run their voter rolls through the upgraded SAVE system to check whether any noncitizens appear on their voter rolls.
A number of states, including Texas and Louisiana, have run their entire voting lists through the system and found very small numbers of potential noncitizens on their rolls — matching state-level reviews. But some U.S. citizens have also been inaccurately flagged by SAVE, which has compounded concerns by voting rights advocates that the use of SAVE will disenfranchise eligible voters.
In its lawsuits against states, the Justice Department has cited federal laws and a goal of ensuring states are conducting proper voter roll maintenance. So far federal judges in California, Oregon and Michigan have dismissed DOJ's lawsuits in those states, with the California judge calling the government's request "unprecedented and illegal."
For months, state officials and voting rights advocates have said it's an open question whether at least part of DOJ's motivation for receiving voter roll data from states was to share that data with DHS and run voters through SAVE.
Previous public statements by federal officials about whether DOJ planned to share voter roll data with DHS to search for noncitizens have been unclear.
Last November, 10 Democratic secretaries of state called on the heads of both agencies to clarify what they called "contradictory" statements on the subject.
"DOJ's revelation in the Rhode Island hearing seem to confirm what CLC and others have argued in courts across the country – that the federal government's efforts to obtain voter rolls is part of a larger project to supplant the states' constitutional authority to administer elections and maintain voter rolls," Dan Lenz, senior legal counsel for strategic litigation at the Campaign Legal Center, a voting rights group, said in a statement.
He added that the concession in Rhode Island "continues to raise serious concerns about whether the administration is complying with the Privacy Act and other data protections."
The Justice Department has yet to make any public announcements about a data sharing agreement with DHS or provide an opportunity for the public to comment about the plan, which is required under the Privacy Act before data is shared.