PASADENA, Calif. (CN) - A Ninth Circuit panel on Tuesday questioned the Trump administration's attempt to force Oregon to hand over unredacted voter registration records, focusing in part on whether a 1960 civil rights law authorizes the federal government to collect sensitive voter data from millions of Americans.

The case stems from a lawsuit filed last year after Oregon refused a request for its complete statewide voter registration list, including driver's license numbers and dates of birth. That suit was dismissed in March due to the department's failure to properly state the legal basis and purpose for its demand.

Representing the federal government, attorney Andrew Braniff argued the Civil Rights Act obligates Oregon election officials to retain and produce voting-related records. However, the judges appeared skeptical the decades-old statute extends so far.

U.S. Circuit Judge Lucy Koh repeatedly pressed Braniff on why the department did not cite the Civil Rights Act in its initial demand letter if the authority was, as he argued, "plain."

"The CRA is not in that demand letter," Koh, a Barack Obama appointee, noted early in the hearing.

Braniff responded that the first letter was intended to begin cooperation with the state, while a later communication formally invoked the statute.

The hearing frequently turned to whether Oregon's statewide voter registration database even qualifies as a "record" or "paper" under the Civil Rights Act.

Representing Oregon, Senior Assistant Attorney General Robert Koch argued the unredacted statewide voter list does not actually exist as a standalone document. Instead, he said, Oregon maintains confidential individual voter files and separately generates a public statewide voter list that omits sensitive identifying information.

"The specific voter list that they have requested ... does not exist," Koch told the panel. "The data exists, but data is not a record or paper."

U.S. Circuit Judge Mark Bennett, a Donald Trump appointee, appeared unconvinced, testing the limits of the argument through a series of hypotheticals involving digital data and even cellphone contents.

The panel also spent significant time probing whether the Justice Department's request complies with the federal Privacy Act and system-of-records notice requirements, known as SORNs.

Braniff maintained the department had complied with federal privacy laws, citing a 2003 records notice covering civil rights investigations. But U.S. Circuit Judge Salvador Mendoza Jr., a Joe Biden appointee, questioned whether that notice was too broad to meaningfully inform the public how their voter data could be used.

Koh later pointed to an executive order cited by the government directing the Department of Homeland Security to review "publicly available" voter registration lists, questioning why the DOJ was now demanding unredacted records instead.

Braniff said the government needed full identifying information to check for deceased or noncitizen registrants through DHS databases.

"In order for us to adequately assess whether or not the state voter registration list includes individuals that may be dead or who may be noncitizens, we need the entire list," he said.

Attorney Abha Khanna of Elias Law Group, representing voting rights groups intervening in the case, argued the DOJ was improperly trying to use the Civil Rights Act as a workaround after abandoning separate claims under the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act.

"There is no dispute that neither the NVRA nor HAVA ... provide DOJ with the type of unfettered access that it seeks here," Khanna said firmly.

She argued the government's interpretation would create conflicts with HAVA's requirement that states continually update voter databases, while the Civil Rights Act requires preservation of records for 22 months.

Koh appeared troubled by that tension, noting that under DOJ's reading, states could theoretically face criminal liability for deleting or updating voter data.

"They're generating a brand new list every month," Koh told Braniff. "They're not retaining that list for 22 months as required."

Braniff countered that the statute targets intentional destruction of records to conceal wrongdoing, not ordinary database maintenance.

Source: Courthouse News Service