The U.S. Department of Justice this week added Hawaiʻi to the list of 17 other states it has hauled into court as part of the Trump administration’s effort to gather sensitive personal information on all registered voters across the nation.

U.S. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon wrote to the Hawaiʻi Election Office on Sept. 8 to request the voter registration information, including drivers license numbers and partial social security numbers. That request has been made to at least 40 states, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

Chief Elections Officer Scott Nago refused, and on Thursday the DOJ filed suit in Honolulu federal court.

The lawsuit seeks to compel Nago to provide the voter registration information under the Civil Rights Act of 1960, which allows the attorney general to demand the production, inspection, and analysis of statewide voter registration lists.

The DOJ demand seeks the full name, date of birth and home address of each Hawaiʻi voter along with either the driver’s license number, the last four digits of the voter’s social security number or a unique identifier number assigned to each voter under the Help America Vote Act of 2002.

Last month 10 secretaries of state wrote to the Trump administration raising concerns that the administration might enter the voter registration data in a program used by the Department of Homeland Security to verify citizenship.

Nago declined to discuss the DOJ lawsuit, saying his office does not comment on pending litigation.

Toni Schwartz, public information officer for the state Attorney General’s office, issued a written statement Friday saying that “we will vigorously defend privacy rights of Hawaiʻi’s voters and our lawful election practices against the federal administration’s continued, nationwide overreach.”

“The Department of the Attorney General will review the filings and respond as appropriate to prevent the federal government from sweeping up the private data of Hawaiʻi residents,” the statement said.

Thomas Hughes, deputy solicitor general for Hawaiʻi, explained in a Sept. 22 letter to the Justice Department that the state cannot comply with the DOJ request for voter registration data because most of that information is confidential under Hawaiʻi law.

Hughes also wrote that “it does not appear” that any of the federal statutes cited by DOJ in its demand letter actually require the state to produce the voter records DOJ is seeking.

So far, the Brennan Center has identified only two states — Indiana and Wyoming — that have provided their full statewide voter registration lists.

The latest batch of lawsuits filed Thursday over the voter registration issue were filed against Hawaii, Colorado, Massachusetts, and Nevada. The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division is also suing Fulton County, Georgia — for records related to the 2020 election.

The lawsuits contend the U.S. Attorney General is responsible for enforcing of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which require states to have “proper and effective voter registration and voter list maintenance programs,” according to a written statement from the Justice Department.

“States have the statutory duty to preserve and protect their constituents from vote dilution,” Dhillon, who heads up DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, said in the statement. “At this Department of Justice, we will not permit states to jeopardize the integrity and effectiveness of elections by refusing to abide by our federal elections laws. If states will not fulfill their duty to protect the integrity of the ballot, we will.”

The lawsuits also rely on the authority granted to the attorney general under Civil Rights Act of 1960,

National Public Radio reported Friday that Trump in 2020 lost in all of the states that have been sued by DOJ over the records so far.