Background
In the summer of 2025, the U.S. Attorney General sent a series of demand letters to Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson seeking the state’s unredacted statewide voter registration list — known as the “qualified voter file” — including the full dates of birth, driver’s license numbers, and partial Social Security numbers of every registered Michigan voter. The demands were framed as necessary to assess Michigan’s compliance with the list-maintenance requirements of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), and ultimately invoked Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 as compulsory authority.
Benson produced only the public version of the voter list, with personal identifying information redacted, and declined to go further. The federal government sued in the Western District of Michigan, seeking declaratory relief and a court order compelling full production. The district court dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim, and the government appealed solely on the Title III issue.
Title III was enacted in 1960 to arm the Attorney General with access to state voting records in order to investigate and combat racial discrimination at the polls. It requires election officers to retain and preserve “all records and papers which come into [their] possession relating to any application, registration, payment of poll tax, or other act requisite to voting” in a federal election, and authorizes the Attorney General to demand such records in writing with a stated basis and purpose.
The Court’s Holding
A two-judge majority (Judge Mathis, joined by Judge Cole) affirmed dismissal on two independent grounds. First, Michigan’s qualified voter file is not subject to Title III because it never “came into” Secretary Benson’s possession within the ordinary meaning of that phrase. The court held that “come into possession” means to acquire, obtain, or receive from a third party — not to create. Because the qualified voter file is an internally generated electronic database established and maintained by Michigan officials (not a record received from voters or other outside sources), it falls outside Title III’s scope. The court reinforced this reading through the surplusage canon — Congress used narrower language in Title III than it did in the NVRA, which broadly covers “all records” — and the harmonious-reading canon, noting that treating the voter file as a Title III record would place Michigan officials in violation of federal law whenever they updated the rolls as the NVRA and HAVA require.
Second, and independently, the court held that the government’s demand letters failed to satisfy Title III’s procedural requirement that a written demand contain both a statement of basis and a statement of purpose. The July 21 and August 8 letters cited only the NVRA and HAVA, not Title III, and stated no purpose. The August 14 letter cited Title III and stated a purpose, but omitted the required basis. Because “shall” in the statute is mandatory, each demand must contain both elements; none of the three letters did.
The court rejected the government’s reliance on a last-minute Office of Legal Counsel opinion — issued the day before oral argument, approximately 66 years after Title III’s enactment — finding it non-contemporaneous, unsupported by any consistent prior Executive Branch interpretation, and in conflict with the statute’s plain text. Judge Nalbandian dissented.
Key Takeaways
- Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 covers only records that election officials receive from outside sources (e.g., voter applications, poll-tax receipts) — not databases that officials themselves create and maintain.
- The government’s Title III demand letters must independently satisfy both the “basis” and “purpose” requirements of 52 U.S.C. § 20703; a letter satisfying only one element is legally deficient.
- A last-minute OLC opinion issued decades after a statute’s enactment, without a showing of consistent prior Executive Branch interpretation, carries little interpretive weight under Loper Bright.
- Reading Title III to cover internally generated statewide voter rolls would create an irreconcilable conflict with the NVRA and HAVA, which affirmatively require states to alter those same rolls on a continuous basis.
Why It Matters
This decision significantly narrows the federal government’s ability to use Title III as a tool to compel states to hand over comprehensive voter registration databases containing sensitive personal data. The ruling makes clear that a 1960 record-preservation statute aimed at combating racial discrimination cannot be stretched to cover modern, state-generated electronic voter files — regardless of the stated investigative rationale. For state election officials nationwide, the decision provides strong support for resisting broad federal demands for unredacted voter data absent a more specific statutory hook.
The case also carries broader administrative-law significance: the Sixth Circuit’s refusal to defer to an OLC opinion issued on the eve of oral argument — citing its non-contemporaneous vintage and conflict with plain statutory text — signals continued judicial skepticism of opportunistic Executive Branch statutory interpretations in the post-Loper Bright environment. States, election administrators, and litigants watching the ongoing wave of federal voter-roll enforcement actions will find the dual-ground holding particularly durable.