The U.S. Department of Justice  Thursday announced it had filed federal lawsuits against Utah and four other states — Oklahoma, Kentucky, West Virginia, and New Jersey — “for failure to produce their full voter registration lists upon request.”

The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court against Utah Lt. Governor Deidre Henderson accuses her of violating the Civil Rights Act by refusing to “provide the demanded federal election records.”

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It asks the federal court to force Henderson to “produce to the Attorney General the current electronic copy of Utah’s computerized statewide voter registration list, with all fields,” including each voter’s full name, date of birth, residential address, and either their state driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number within five days of a court order.

For months, President Donald Trump’s administration has demanded that states provide copies of their voter lists, calling the information necessary for election integrity efforts. While some states have turned over lists that withhold sensitive personal data, most have declined to offer all the information on their lists while citing state and federal privacy laws that protect American’s personal data.

Last year, the Justice Department filed lawsuits against 24 states and Washington, D.C., seeking court orders to force states to comply. Of those 24 suits, the federal courts have dismissed claims in four states: California, Georgia, Oregon and Michigan, according to the University of Wisconsin Law School.

In the red state of Utah, Henderson said she is among those fighting to protect Utah voters’ protected information.

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“Neither state nor federal law entitles the Department of Justice to collect private information on law-abiding American citizens,” Henderson said in a statement posted on X in response to the suit on Thursday. “Utahns can be assured that my office will always follow the Constitution and the law, protect voters’ rights, and administer free and fair elections.”

Henderson also said in that post that the Justice Department has “declined our previous offer to share publicly available voter lists with them.” She said the lawsuit against Utah and several other Republican states came “as expected.”

Last year, the U.S. Department of Justice sent letters to states asking for information related to their voter list maintenance under the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act.

Several of those letters also requested state voter registration lists, prompting concern among some Democrats and voting rights activists about how the department, under the control of President Donald Trump, plans to use the data.

At the time, Lt. Governor Deidre Henderson’s office shared its letter to the Department of Justice in response to the request, which says the state has provided its publicly available voter registration list. Henderson’s office also pushed back on the department’s claim that Utah has “the lowest rate in the nation for voter registration records removed from the voter registration rolls.”

“Utah remains one of the most proactive states for maintaining current and accurate voter registration rolls,” Henderson’s office wrote, explaining that the department was relying on the limited reporting available from Utah’s 25-year-old system, which is being replaced. “Utah is in the process of implementing a modern system with enhanced reporting capabilities that will be in place at the beginning of 2027.”

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The department’s focus on elections comes after Trump directed U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi in March to seek information about suspected election crimes from state election officials and empowered her to potentially withhold grants and other funds from uncooperative states, Stateline reported.

Henderson’s response in July, however, didn’t satisfy the Trump administration.

“The Justice Department will continue to fulfill its oversight role dutifully, neutrally, and transparently wherever Americans vote in federal elections,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, said in a statement issued Thursday. “Many state election officials, however, are choosing to fight us in court rather than show their work. We will not be deterred, regardless of party affiliation, from carrying out critical election integrity legal duties.”

The Justice Department has said it needs voters’ detailed information to ensure ineligible people are kept off state voter rolls and that only citizens are voting.

Last month, Henderson’s office released findings that more than 99.9 percent of Utah’s 2 million registered voters are U.S. citizens. After that review her office said it removed one additional noncitizen from voter rolls after finding four earlier last year. The review also found that a fraction of Utah’s more than 2 million voters (486) had incomplete information that election officials weren’t able to immediately verify.

Henderson released those findings after the Trump administration’s demands for records, and as some Republican Utah lawmakers push for stricter voting laws, including tougher enforcement of a prohibition on noncitizen voting in state and federal elections and efforts to further restrict mail-in voting.

Another Utah bill that won support from a House committee Wednesday night would require most Utahns to personally return their mail-in ballots at a staffed drop box or voting center while showing a form of identification.

Utah House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, supported a version of that bill last year, but after the Senate weighed in, the 2025 Utah Legislature ultimately passed a watered down version that required Utah voters to write four digits of their state identification number on their by-mail ballots’ return envelopes while slowly phasing out the state’s automatic vote-by-mail system.

This year, Schultz and the bill’s sponsor Representative Jefferson Burton, R-Provo, are trying again to require in-person voter ID requirements. But it remains to be seen whether that effort will survive the Senate.

In response to Thursday’s lawsuit, Utah Democratic Party Chair Brian King issued a statement calling the suit “a blatant overreach and a threat to both Utah voters and our election process.”

“The federal government demanding unfettered access to the state’s voter rolls — including sensitive personal data — is not about ‘election integrity.’ It’s about control and interfering with the midterm election in November,” King said. “We will continue to stand up to abuse of power and support efforts to maintain Utah’s constitutional right to run its own elections free from federal interference.”