Yellow Jacket InitiativeBy E. Lawrence Anderson, Yellow Jacket Initiative
As of Friday, November 6, 2026, about 7:15 p.m. ET. Primary sources: the district court's Memorandum Opinion (ECF 51) and Order (ECF 52) of Friday, Oct. 9, 2026, the plaintiffs' request for a status conference (ECF 53, Oct. 15), the stay-denial opinion and order (ECF 61-62) and minute order of Monday, Nov. 2, and the government's motion for a stay pending appeal in the D.C. Circuit (No. 26-5362, Wednesday, Nov. 4). All were read from CourtListener's RECAP mirror, which can lag the courts' own systems. Every quotation below was checked against those texts. We did not report this ruling when it was issued on Oct. 9; this note closes that gap.
The government's position, first. In a motion filed Wednesday, Nov. 4, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (No. 26-5362), the Justice Department says "there is no DOJ rule or order adopting any such policy." It says the district court took "records requests, information-sharing arrangements, database comparisons, and enforcement actions undertaken to investigate compliance with federal election laws," treated them as a single agency action, and vacated them all at once. The department says it is authorized to demand election records under Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 and that it complied with the Privacy Act and the Paperwork Reduction Act. It says the ruling means it "can no longer compare voter rolls to identify potential duplicate registrations," that the order "has already affected pending litigation," and that a stay "would not remove anyone from the rolls." These are the department's arguments; the appeals court has not ruled on them.
What the district court did. On Friday, Oct. 9, 2026, Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted partial summary judgment to Common Cause and four individual voters in Common Cause v. U.S. Department of Justice, No. 1:26-cv-01352. Her order states: "The Court sets aside and vacates the Defendants' Voter List Maintenance Policy, which is defined in the Court's Memorandum Opinion, ECF No. 51."
The opinion describes the policy "drawing the facts from the administrative record." Starting in May 2025, it says, the Civil Rights Division "began requesting states' unredacted voter rolls, disclosing the lists to other federal agencies, comparing them against a federal database to identify purportedly ineligible voters, and demanding that states remove voters from their rolls based on the results of those comparisons." The record "reflects that the Division made these requests to 49 states and the District of Columbia," and "At least 18 states fully cooperated." The division "shared that data with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)," and "DHS would run that data through the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system." This is the court's description; the department disputes on appeal that these activities amount to a single policy.
The court's holdings, in its words: the claimed authorities, the "Civil Rights Act of 1960, the National Voter Registration Act, and the Help America Vote Act—do not authorize the policy"; the policy "is arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act"; it "violates both substantive and procedural protections in the Privacy Act"; and it "violates limits imposed by the Paperwork Reduction Act." On the record, the court found that "DOJ entirely failed to consider the risk that its use of citizenship records known to be unreliable would lead the Civil Rights Division to demand that states remove U.S. citizens from their voter rolls."
The court also stated the limits of its ruling: "Today's decision does not prevent the federal government from taking lawful steps to support states' efforts to maintain accurate voter rolls. Neither does it prevent states from maintaining their own voter rolls."
The stay requests. The department filed its notice of appeal on Friday, Oct. 16 (docketed in the D.C. Circuit on Monday, Oct. 19), and asked the district court for a stay the same day. On Monday, Nov. 2, Judge Sooknanan denied it. Her opinion says: "A stay applicant cannot show irreparable harm from an inability to engage in unlawful activity." The same day she denied, by minute order, a plaintiffs' request for a status conference (ECF 53). That request, filed Oct. 15, argued that the department's Oct. 13 letters to California officials, asking them to segregate returned ballots of listed voters, implicated the Oct. 9 order. The court found a conference "not warranted at this time"; it did not rule on whether the letters violated its order. The department's appellate motion followed on Nov. 4.
What is not established.
- How many voters were removed from rolls under the policy. The opinion's findings were made on summary judgment and are contested on appeal.
- What the department has stopped doing since Oct. 9, beyond its own declarant's account.
- Whether the D.C. Circuit will grant a stay. As of its last docket entry (Nov. 4), it had not ruled, and the plaintiffs' response was not yet on the docket.
Related cases. This case reaches the department's collection and sharing of state voter lists. It is separate from League of Women Voters v. DHS (D.D.C. No. 1:26-cv-03602), in which Judge Chutkan on Nov. 2 barred DHS and DOJ list transmissions, and from the Supreme Court's Sept. 25 stay in the SAVE case (No. 26A308). We do not assert any relationship among the rulings beyond what the courts say.
Earlier: League of Women Voters v. DHS: a federal judge bars DOJ and DHS from sending more suspected-noncitizen voter lists to election officials in any state (Nov. 4).
Sources: Common Cause v. DOJ, No. 1:26-cv-01352 (D.D.C.): Memorandum Opinion (ECF 51), Order (ECF 52), Request for status conference (ECF 53), Stay-denial opinion (ECF 61), docket; Common Cause v. DOJ, No. 26-5362 (D.C. Cir.): Motion for stay pending appeal (Nov. 4, 2026), docket.
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