It didn’t make headlines. There was no press conference. The Trump administration’s Justice Department simply filed paperwork to dismiss a lawsuit — one that had been protecting Alabama voters from an illegal purge program — and moved on.
That was one of seven voting rights cases the DOJ has quietly dropped since January 2025.
The department that is legally responsible for enforcing the Voting Rights Act has, case by case, walked away from that responsibility. And it has done so while gutting the very division tasked with the job.
What Happened in Alabama
In August 2024, Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen identified 3,251 registered voters who had at some point been assigned a “noncitizen identification number” by the Department of Homeland Security. He directed county boards to deactivate those voters and referred all 3,251 names to the state Attorney General for potential criminal investigation and prosecution.
The problem: many of those people were naturalized U.S. citizens — legal voters who had become citizens years earlier, but whose old DHS records still reflected their pre-citizenship status. Allen’s own office acknowledged the virtual certainty that naturalized citizens were being swept up in the purge. They moved forward anyway.
The Biden DOJ sued in September 2024, arguing the program violated the National Voter Registration Act, which prohibits systematic voter purges within 90 days of a federal election. A federal judge agreed, blocking the purge before the November election. At least 717 U.S. citizens had already been wrongly flagged.
When Trump took office, his DOJ dropped the case. The dismissal came in March 2025, with no public announcement. The department’s stated reason: to give Alabama “the time and space to develop a legal, efficient, and effective process.”
Alabama Was Not Alone
The DOJ has now withdrawn from seven major Section 2 voting rights cases. The full list includes:
A lawsuit against Georgia challenging a voter suppression law that a federal court found was designed to “deny or abridge the right of Black Georgians to vote on account of race or color.” A similar voter purge case in Virginia, where naturalized citizens were also removed from rolls ahead of the 2024 election. A Texas redistricting challenge. And a suit against Houston County, Georgia over an election policy found to unfairly diminish the voting power of the county’s Black residents.
In some cases the DOJ dismissed its own suits. In others, it pulled its briefs, withdrew from oral arguments, or rescinded requests to participate as a friend of the court. Either way, the outcome was the same: the federal government stopped showing up to defend voting rights.
The Division Behind It Is Being Dismantled
The withdrawals didn’t happen in a vacuum. Since Trump took office, approximately 250 lawyers — roughly 70% of the Civil Rights Division’s legal staff — have left the department. The voting rights section, which once operated with dozens of attorneys, is now running with a skeleton crew.
Former DOJ Civil Rights Division staff have been direct about what this means. In interviews and public statements, former attorneys have described the division as effectively “destroyed.” The Brennan Center for Justice has documented the pattern, concluding that the Justice Department is “shirking its responsibility to voters” in ways that will be difficult to reverse.
The Civil Rights Division was created in 1957 specifically to enforce federal civil rights laws, including the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Its gutting is not a side effect of budget cuts or bureaucratic reshuffling. It is the policy.
What It Means for 2026
The midterm elections are eight months away. Voter registration deadlines in some states begin as early as this summer. The SAVE America Act — which Trump is currently demanding be tied to DHS funding — would add a documentary proof-of-citizenship requirement to voter registration nationwide, a measure civil rights groups say would disenfranchise millions of eligible voters who lack the specific documents required.
The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division would normally be the last line of legal defense against measures like these. That line is gone.
The voters who were wrongly flagged in Alabama — citizens who built lives here, became Americans, and registered to vote — were referred to the state Attorney General for criminal investigation. The federal government’s response was to drop the case protecting them and walk away.
No announcement. No press conference. Just paperwork.