DOJ Voter-Roll Suits Against Colorado, D.C. Both Dismissed — Colorado Ruling Forecloses Refiling

Denver-based U.S. District Judge Philip Brimmer dismissed the Trump DOJ’s lawsuit against Colorado on or about August 4, 2026, ruling DOJ failed to show a legitimate reason for demanding unredacted voter data — Colorado had already provided its publicly available master voter file — and that the government is not entitled to the sensitive underlying data under federal law. Brimmer dismissed the case with prejudice, barring DOJ from refiling. A D.C. federal judge separately dismissed the district’s parallel case around August 7. Coverage citing this pair of rulings put DOJ’s cumulative voter-roll litigation record at roughly 0-for-20 to 0-for-21, continuing the unbroken losing streak this corpus has tracked since Maryland’s dismissal in June (2026-06-23–doj-voter-roll-maryland-dismissed-0-9-trump-appointee) and the Sixth Circuit’s affirmance in the Michigan case (2026-06-24–sixth-circuit-doj-first-appellate-loss-voter-rolls-michigan).

The “with prejudice” language in Colorado is a sharper defeat than most of the prior dismissals, foreclosing DOJ from simply refiling with amended pleadings in the same court. It arrives the same week the ACLU/Common Cause suit against DOJ’s broader national voter database reported that, despite the losing court record, 12 states have voluntarily complied with DOJ’s data demands outside any court order (2026-08-06–aclu-doj-voter-database-12-states-complied-5-suits-dismissed) — meaning the database DOJ cannot compel through litigation is still being assembled through voluntary state cooperation, a parallel channel unaffected by DOJ’s litigation losses.