Josh Shapiro joins lawsuit against Trump administration’s plan to withhold disaster aid to pressure states on voter data
Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware all joined the lawsuit, which seeks to reverse new rules that tie disaster preparedness funding to adhering to the Trump administration's voter data requests.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro was one of 26 Democratic officials from across the nation to join a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s administration over its efforts to compel states into sharing raw voter data by threatening federal funding for natural disasters.
“Withholding this funding will make our communities less safe and would be dangerous under any circumstance, but doing this in an attempt to undermine states’ authority over elections is reckless and unconstitutional,” Shapiro in a statement Thursday.
New Jersey and Delaware are among the other states on the Illinois-led lawsuit. The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Rhode Island, comes amid escalating tensions between Democratic-run states and the federal government over how best to ensure noncitizens are not voting in any elections — a situation these states say happens extremely rarely.
But New Jersey’s admission Tuesday that about 6,600 noncitizens were inadvertently added to the state’s voter rolls, due to a system error in the state’s department of motor vehicles voter registration program, has thrust the issue into the national spotlight as these efforts were already underway.
The Department of Homeland Security announced earlier this month that the Federal Emergency Management Agency would require states to hand over their unredacted voter rolls and adhere to significant changes in their election administration in order to receive funding for preparation and recovery from catastrophic disasters, such as major storms.
The policy puts nearly $6 million in federal aid at jeopardy for Pennsylvania, according to Shapiro.
Shapiro has routinely signed on to lawsuits against the Trump’s administration, particularly when federal funding to the state has come under threat.
Pennsylvania election officials have repeatedly declined to hand over unredacted voter rolls to the Trump administration, citing privacy concerns.
New Jersey has also refused to provide voter roll data to the Trump administration, though the federal government is using the state’s registration mishap to justify its request.
“We are not in the practice of turning this kind of personally identifying data over to the federal government because we have seen them weaponize it … and they don’t have a reputation for keeping it private, either,” New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill said after a news conference Thursday.
As for the FEMA funding, New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport said in a social media post Thursday that the Trump administration “threatens our safety when it plays politics with these funds.”
While most of the plaintiffs are attorneys general, Shapiro was one of two governors to join the complaint, along with Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, another potential 2028 presidential contender who also leads a state with a Republican attorney general.
In a prime-time address last week, Trump called for an overhaul of U.S. election administration and ticked through old debunked claims about his 2020 election loss.
Pennsylvania and New Jersey are among four states — along with California and Nevada, which also joined the suit — that the Trump administration is targeting for additional scrutiny over their voter rolls, according to a document posted to the White House website last week. The one-pager claimed widespread instances of noncitizen voting, much broader than what New Jersey said it uncovered, though election experts have suggested caution when examining these numbers.
“The Trump Administration is holding critical funding for homeland security and disaster response hostage in their latest attempt to take over our elections and perpetuate baseless conspiracy theories,” Shapiro said in his statement Thursday.
