Illinois voting rights groups recently filed a motion to intervene in a federal lawsuit to prevent the Trump administration from forcing the state to hand over highly sensitive voter data.
In the Jan. 9 court filing, which was filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois, voting rights groups, including Common Cause and the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) and three Illinois voters, Pablo Mendoza, Brian Beals and Alejandra Ibañez, joined the ACLU National Voting Rights Project (American Civil Liberties Union), ACLU Illinois, and Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights are seeking to intervene in United States v. Matthews to prevent the U.S. Department of Justice from obtaining sensitive Illinois voter personal information and data.
The parties are represented by attorneys from the ACLU Foundation, ACLU Illinois and the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights.
“It has been widely reported that the United States intends to use this data to build an unauthorized national voter database and to target voters for potential challenges and disenfranchisement,” according to the Jan. 9 filing.
The federal government is seeking voters’ full names, dates of birth, addresses, driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers.
Common Cause is a non-partisan organization dedicated to grassroots voter engagement statewide, and ICIRR is a non-partisan statewide coalition that promotes civic, cultural, social, and political participation among immigrants and refugees.
“These privacy laws are in place for a reason,” Elizabeth Grossman, Common Cause Illinois’ executive director, said in a written statement. “Handing this data over to the federal government would put voters’ sensitive information at risk and could result in eligible voters being denied their right to participate in a major election year. Common Cause is fighting to protect the rights of Illinois voters and to prevent the potential misuse of their data.”
Both organizations in the court filing state that the populations they serve, such as naturalized citizens or formerly incarcerated people, could be flagged as ineligible voters and that a ruling in favor of the Trump administration would discourage Illinois residents from voting and undermine their work.
“Every election cycle, ICIRR and our members encourage our community members to get out and vote, but Trump’s repeated violations of federal law are an attempt to silence our community’s voice,” Lawrence Benito, ICIRR’s executive director, said in a press statement. “We reject Trump’s attempt to access private voter data and suppress voter participation. We remain committed to protecting the sacred, hard-won right to vote.”
DOJ officials previously said they want the state’s full electronic voter file to “ascertain Illinois’s compliance with the list maintenance requirements of the NVRA [National Voter Registration Act] and HAVA [Help America Vote Act].”
The debate over turning over voter data dates back to July 2025, when the DOJ asked Illinois and other states to collect and turn over sensitive voter data. The state didn’t do so, citing state and federal privacy protections.
In response, the DOJ filed a lawsuit last month against the Director of the Illinois Board of Elections. In total, the DOJ has filed similar lawsuits in 22 other states to compel them to share voter data.
“The Trump Department of Justice – without proper authorization from Congress – is apparently seeking to create a nationwide database that can be used to harass voters and fuel false claims of voter fraud,” Kevin Fee, legal director at the ACLU of Illinois, said in a written release. “It is critical that states – including Illinois – resist this illegal effort and protect the privacy of our voters.”
The Illinois court filing can be found here.
