More than a dozen former U.S. Department of Justice employees say they oppose the department’s lawsuit that seeks Maine’s voter registration data, arguing the Trump administration has “overstepped its bounds.”

In a symbolic win for Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, the defendant in the lawsuit, 16 former attorneys who worked on voting enforcement under both Republican and Democratic presidents filed an amicus brief Friday in the pending lawsuit. Bellows, a Democratic candidate for governor, has made combatting President Donald Trump central to her gubernatorial bid.

The DOJ under Trump has demanded that Maine and various other states turn over unredacted voter registration lists, including personal information such as names, birth dates and Social Security numbers. Last year, Bellows refused to provide the voter registration data, which prompted the federal government to sue.

DOJ officials have said the data is needed to ensure ineligible voters are removed from voter rolls and to enforce federal voting rights statutes. Bellows and Democratic officials in other states have warned of privacy concerns and argued that the Trump administration has questionable motivations in seeking the voter data. The Justice Department’s push comes as Trump continues to make baseless claims about election fraud and falsely assert he won the 2020 election.

In their brief, the former DOJ attorneys who worked under Trump and other leaders dating back to former President Richard Nixon argued the Trump administration’s purpose for requesting the data is tied to its controversial immigration crackdown that has targeted Maine and Democratic-led states since last year.

The request “appears to be a stalking horse for its true purpose: to enable the federal government to conduct its own list maintenance to discover whether noncitizens or undocumented immigrants are registered to vote,” the attorneys wrote, emphasizing that existing laws place states — not the federal government — in charge of maintaining voter registration lists.

Various studies have found virtually no evidence of noncitizens voting illegally in U.S. elections. The former DOJ attorneys wrote that the department has failed to meet the standard under the 1960 Civil Rights Act to obtain Maine’s voter records, and that the department had previously used the civil rights statute to more narrowly probe racial discrimination cases.

“The 1960 Civil Rights Act does not authorize such a sweeping information request on such flimsy grounds,” the attorneys added while calling for a judge to dismiss the lawsuit.

A Justice Department spokesperson referred a reporter to court filings when asked for comment Monday. The department made an initial request for the state’s data last summer by claiming Maine had roughly 11,000 voters with duplicate registrations. The Maine Republican Party also claimed that 51 Mainers voted twice in the 2024 election, but Bellows said in July that her office’s investigation found those allegations were false.

Harmeet Dhillon, the department’s assistant attorney general for civil rights, said last year the Maine lawsuit is part of ensuring Americans “feel confident in the integrity of our electoral process, and the refusal of certain states to protect their citizens against vote dilution will result in legal consequences.”

Bellows said Monday she welcomes the support from the attorneys “who have unique experience and insight into just how unprecedented the actions of the Trump DOJ are.”

“This is a win for those of us fighting to protect American voter data,” Bellows said.

The Justice Department filed its lawsuit against Bellows and the state in the U.S. District Court for Maine last September. The next hearing is scheduled for late March.