A federal judge in Washington on Monday, November 2, refused to pause her own order striking down the Justice Department's nationwide voter-data program, keeping the block in place on the eve of the midterm elections. U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan of the District of Columbia denied the department's motion for a stay pending appeal in Common Cause v. DOJ, the lawsuit in which she vacated the department's voter-list policy in a 78-page opinion on October 9.

Source: Common Cause press statement, Nov 2, 2026

A stay would have let the department resume the program while its appeal is heard. The denial means the October order stays in force for now: the department cannot go back to collecting statewide voter rolls under that policy, sharing them with other federal agencies, running them through a citizenship database, or pressing states to remove voters flagged by that process, while the case continues in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

49 + D.C.States and the District of Columbia from which the department demanded unredacted statewide voter rolls
18States that had handed over voter data under the program, according to Reuters reporting on the case
78 pagesLength of Judge Sooknanan's October 9 opinion vacating the policy
3.3 millionU.S. citizens a 2006 Social Security Administration audit found misidentified as noncitizens in federal records, cited by the judge

What the program did, and why the judge struck it down

The policy at issue — the department's Voter List Maintenance Policy, challenged in a lawsuit filed in April 2026 by Common Cause, the Common Cause Education Fund and four individual voters — asked states for their complete, unredacted voter registration lists: names, birth dates, home addresses, and driver's licence and Social Security numbers. States that cooperated sent their data to the department, which shared it with the Department of Homeland Security, where it was checked against the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database. Cooperating states had also agreed to remove voters flagged as potentially ineligible within 45 days of being notified.

Source: Democracy Docket case coverage, Oct 2026

Judge Sooknanan held that none of the laws the department cited — Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960, the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act — authorizes such a program, that the department acted arbitrarily by ignoring evidence that the citizenship records it relied on can be outdated, and that the program violated the Privacy Act and the Paperwork Reduction Act. "DOJ cannot run roughshod over longstanding laws that were carefully crafted to protect the rights of American people," she wrote in October. She added: "The Court vacates a policy that has removed United States citizens from the voter rolls in their home states and risks disenfranchising many more."

The Justice Department's case for a stay

The department noticed its appeal to the D.C. Circuit on October 16 and moved the same day for a stay, arguing that there is no discrete policy for the court to have vacated and that the ruling "has hamstrung DOJ's ability to enforce the election laws that Congress has empowered it to enforce." The department said it must be allowed to enforce those statutes given Congress's instructions and the continuing need for election oversight, and that it is likely to succeed on appeal. The plaintiffs opposed the stay, and on Monday the judge declined to grant it. The department had earlier said it was reviewing the October ruling.

Source: DOJ motion for stay pending appeal, Case 1:26-cv-01352-SLS, Doc 57, filed Oct 16, 2026

Common Cause and its counsel, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), welcomed Monday's ruling. "Once again, the Trump administration's efforts to hijack the elections have been stopped by a federal court," they said in a joint statement. "As today's decision reaffirms, the executive branch has no business meddling in how states manage their voter rolls — and no legal authority to do so. States have the constitutional authority to run elections, not the President." They added: "The Department of Justice has no authority to — and no legitimate purpose for — consolidating voter data," and that voters can now "cast their ballots this November with confidence that their personal information is protected." Those characterizations are the plaintiffs' position; the department disputes them and is pursuing its appeal.

Source: Common Cause / CREW joint statement, Nov 2, 2026

What this ruling does — and does not — do

It keeps the federal program blocked while the appeal proceeds. It does not legalize voting by noncitizens, which remains illegal in federal elections, and it does not stop states from running their own lawful voter-list maintenance under state law. The dispute is over one federal program: whether Washington may collect whole state rolls, run them through federal databases, and press states to remove flagged names.

Why it matters for naturalized voters

The risk the judge flagged — outdated citizenship records wrongly flagging real citizens — falls hardest on naturalized Americans, whose citizenship may not be reflected in older federal files. That includes many Punjabi-Americans and other immigrants who became citizens years after arriving, and whose names are exactly the ones a database cross-check is most likely to get wrong. A removal from the rolls days before an election is, in practice, very hard to undo in time to vote.

What happens next

The appeal continues in the D.C. Circuit, and the department could ask that court for an emergency stay of its own, so Monday's denial does not end the fight — but it means the program stays blocked through Election Day on November 3, when all 435 House seats and 35 Senate seats are on the ballot. Awaaz Punjab will follow the appeal and any further order from the appeals court as it is issued.