Judge rules US Justice Department filed a lawsuit over Georgia voter data in the wrong city

ATLANTA (AP) — A federal judge in Georgia on Friday dismissed a U.S. Justice Department lawsuit seeking voter information from the state, ruling the federal government had sued in the wrong city.

U.S. District Judge Ashley Royal found the government should have sued Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in Atlanta, and not in a separate federal judicial district in Macon, where the secretary of state also has an office.

Royal dismissed the lawsuit without prejudice, meaning the Justice Department can refile it. The department declined to comment Friday.

The Justice Department has now filed lawsuits against 24 states and the District of Columbia seeking voter information as part of its effort to collect detailed voting data, including dates of birth and driver’s license and Social Security numbers. A federal judge in California rejected the lawsuit against that state on privacy grounds, while a judge in Oregon has suggested he may dismiss the case there.

The Trump administration characterizes the lawsuits as an effort to ensure election security, and the Justice Department says the states are violating federal law by refusing to provide voter lists and information.

Raffensperger has been the rare Republican to decline the demand, saying Georgia law prohibits the release of voters’ confidential personal unless certain qualifications are met. Raffensperger argues the federal government hasn’t met those conditions. He says he shared the public part of the voter roll and information about how Georgia removes ineligible or outdated registrations in December.

“I will always follow the law and follow the Constitution,” Raffensperger said in a statement Friday. “I won’t violate the oath I took to stand up for the people of this state, regardless of who or what compels me to do otherwise.”

The refusal to hand over the records has become an issue in Raffensperger’s 2026 run for governor. Raffensperger in January 2021 famously refused a demand from President Donald Trump in a phone call to “find” enough votes to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s win in Georgia’s 2020 presidential election. Many Trump-loving Republicans still hold a grudge against Raffensperger.

The issue flared just Thursday in a hearing by a state Senate committee where multiple Republican state senators slammed Raffensperger for failing to comply, saying he legally could do so. The committee voted along party lines to advance a resolution calling on Raffensperger to hand over the data and calling it the “latest example of a pattern of behavior by the secretary and his office to refuse oversight of his administration of Georgia’s elections.”

State Sen. Randy Robertson, a Republican from Cataula who filed the resolution, said the dismissal is “frustrating” because even if the Justice Department refiles the lawsuit, the problem will take longer to resolve.

“As public officials we all should participate in any investigation done by a law enforcement agency,” Robertson told The Associated Press Friday.

Robertson is one of many Republican lawmakers backing Lt. Gov. Burt Jones over Raffensperger for the GOP governor nomination. Jones, who already has Trump’s endorsement for governor, was one of 16 state Republicans who signed a certificate that Trump had won Georgia and declaring themselves the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors.