OLYMPIA, WA – The Department of Justice on Tuesday sued Washington’s secretary of state over his refusal to provide personal information contained in the state’s voter rolls.

Secretary of State Steve Hobbs told the Justice Department in September that he would be willing to provide voter names, addresses, genders, years of birth, voting records, registration dates and registration numbers. But he wouldn’t give dates of birth, driver’s license numbers or the last four digits of social security numbers. He wrote that information is protected under Washington law.

The Trump administration had requested the voter data from Washington amid its ongoing search for evidence to back up President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud caused by immigrants without legal voting status.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in western Washington, sets up yet another clash between the Trump administration and the Democratic-led government in Washington state.

The Justice Department is asking a judge to order Hobbs to provide the state’s voter registration list, including either voters’ driver’s license numbers or the last four digits of their social security numbers.

The 7-page complaint alleges Hobbs’ decision violates the federal Civil Rights Act of 1960. The law states that election officials have to provide certain voter information to the U.S. attorney general if it is demanded. It gives federal courts the power to compel states to hand over the records.

“Accurate voter rolls are the cornerstone of fair and free elections, and too many states have fallen into a pattern of noncompliance with basic voter roll maintenance,” U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement. “The Department of Justice will continue filing proactive election integrity litigation until states comply with basic election safeguards.”

Hobbs spokesperson Charlie Boisner said the secretary of state’s office’s “only knowledge of this lawsuit is through media requests and subsequent reporting.”

“I have not been served,” Hobbs told reporters Tuesday after he and Gov. Bob Ferguson certified the state’s November election results. “I don’t know if they’re going to do that and nothing has changed. So I’m not handing over private information.”

Ferguson said he was “very confident we’ll be successful in court.”

“Why the Trump administration is choosing to file this lawsuit, that’s for them to answer,” he said. “But I am confident in how this all ends when it comes to litigation with the Trump administration, which is Washington state wins.”

The Trump administration says it wants the records to ensure states are complying with the National Voter Registration Act requirements to remove voters who are ineligible from their voter rolls and Help America Vote Act prohibition on processing voter registration applications without verifying the applicants’ identity.

But in his response in September, Hobbs wrote that he feared the information would be shared with the Department of Homeland Security to fuel the Trump administration’s ongoing immigration crackdown. He notes that the information he is willing to give “should be more than sufficient to assess Washington’s list maintenance efforts.”

Hobbs, a former Democratic state senator, told the Justice Department he was also concerned the collection could violate federal privacy law, a concern he reiterated on Tuesday.

“In addition to ensuring that Washington’s voter registration list complies with all applicable federal and state laws, my obligation also includes protecting Washington voters from unnecessary and illegitimate intrusions on their privacy,” he wrote in September.

Hobbs didn’t receive a response to his letter from federal officials, Boisner said.

The lawsuit doesn’t come as a surprise, though. Harmeet Dhillon, an assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s civil rights division, recently said “we will definitely be taking action to enforce our federal civil rights law” and get Washington state’s voter rolls.

The Trump administration has used a variety of means in its attempts to obtain data from states it otherwise wouldn’t have access to.

Washington is one of six states the Department of Justice filed suit against Tuesday, attempting to access voter files. The feds previously sued another half-dozen states over the same issue in September. Two others were sued earlier, bringing the total to 14 states going to court with the Justice Department.

Only Indiana and Wyoming are known to have given their full voter registration lists to the Department of Justice, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. Others, like Washington, have provided publicly available information.

Voters in Nebraska and South Carolina have filed cases to stop their own state election officials from sharing private voter information with the feds.

The Washington state case was assigned to Magistrate Judge S. Kate Vaughan, a former assistant U.S. attorney.

The state attorney general’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

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