Dem Gov. Tony Evers and voting rights advocates praised a federal judge’s dismissal of a lawsuit by U.S. DOJ seeking Wisconsin voters’ unredacted information.

“The Trump Administration only wants this info so they can prevent eligible Wisconsinites from voting, sow doubt in our secure elections, make it harder for our clerks and administrators to do their jobs, and claim there’s fraud when they lose elections,” Evers posted on X Thursday, hailing the ruling as “great news.”

The U.S. DOJ first sought the information last summer and then filed suit in December after the bipartisan state Elections Commission voted 5-1 to reject the request. In doing so, the state body pointed to Wisconsin law that prevented the release of information such as voters’ Social Security numbers, birthdays and drivers’ license numbers that had been sought by the feds.

In its suit, DOJ argued a provision in the Voting Rights Act, enacted in the 1960s to combat state efforts to suppress Black citizens’ right to vote, gave the agency access to the records.

That provision includes a provision requiring state election officials to produce records for inspection upon receiving a written demand from the U.S. attorney general. 

But U.S. Judge James Peterson in Madison wrote in today’s decision that he agreed with other courts that have rejected similar demands from the Trump administration. That includes their finding that the provision only applies to records state election officials have received, not ones they have produced on their own, such as the voter registration list.

The U.S. DOJ didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

In all, the federal government has requested similar information from 48 states and Washington, D.C., as part of what the DOJ says is an effort to ensure noncitizens aren’t voting. 

It has filed lawsuits against 30 states and Washington, D.C., and judges have now dismissed seven of them. Meanwhile, DOJ reached a settlement with Oklahoma and dismissed that suit, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

Meanwhile, 15 states, each of them heavily Republican, have either provided their full statewide voter registration lists or have said they will.

Doug Poland with the progressive firm Law Forward, which represented intervenors in the case, said with the rarity of noncitizens voting, the lawsuits have been “thinly-masked efforts to manipulate and subvert future elections.” 

“The court recognized this as an illegal attempt to gather and weaponize data on Americans, dressed up in the language of voting rights enforcement,” Poland said. “We will continue to stand up to the Trump administration’s illegal schemes to interfere with elections administration and erode the rights of voters in Wisconsin.”