Lyman launches lawsuit claiming Utah is violating national election transparency law

Former gubernatorial candidate Phil Lyman launched another legal battle against Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson on Friday, alleging that Utah voter privacy laws violate federal statute and demanding that he receive access to state voter registration information.

The organization representing Lyman, the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a national nonprofit firm focused on election transparency, said they filed the lawsuit on Friday morning in the Utah District of the United States District Court.

During his race against Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, Lyman filed a number of unsuccessful lawsuits, including one he filed by himself asking the Utah Supreme Court — and then the U.S. Supreme Court — to overturn the results of his 2024 election loss to Cox in the primary and general contests.

“I’m not interested in election integrity because I ran for governor, I ran for governor because I’m interested in election integrity,” Lyman said Friday.

Lyman was joined by around 150 supporters on the south steps of Utah Capitol Building who repeatedly made statements about Lyman being “cheated” out of an election and Lyman being the rightful governor of the state of Utah.

But whereas Lyman has spent the past year making unsubstantiated allegations of corruption against Henderson, the lawsuit filed Friday takes a narrow approach that the Public Interest Legal Foundation has used several times before to win cases across the country.

“This isn’t about the lieutenant governor; this is about the Utah statute that doesn’t comply with federal law,” Chris Adams, the president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, told the Deseret News.

What is Utah’s voter privacy law?

Utah law allows voters to make their voter registration information private and unavailable for public information requests. Only government employees acting in their official capacity and political parties can access this information.

Utah law also classifies the voter registration records of some “protected individuals” as “withheld,” meaning they cannot be accessed by political parties; only government employees acting in their official capacity.

This designation applies to voters who are public figures, law enforcement officers, members of the armed forces, victims of domestic violence, those with a protection order, and all those who had already opted for their information to be private before the “withheld” designation was created in 2020.

A request for voter registration rolls from Nov. 3, 2020, revealed that nearly 34% of the 610,000 voter registration records in Salt Lake County had either “private” status (16%) or were “withheld” (18%), according to the lawsuit.

Lyman’s lawsuit, obtained by the Deseret News, argues that Utah’s opt-in privacy designations, and expanded “withheld” category from 2020 — which are both unique in the United States — are illegal under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.

The 32-year-old law requires state DMVs to provide voter registration when individuals obtain a driver’s license. But it also mandates that states create a process for members of the public to inspect all “voter list maintenance records,” including the final statewide voter registration database.

“No other state in the country does what Utah does and block public records from the public simply by marking a box that 40% of the people have hidden records,” Adams told the Deseret News. “No state in the country even comes close to them.”

What does the lawsuit mean for Henderson?

The case does not allege any “malfeasance” by state officials, Adams clarified. It argues that the state law allowing for increased voter privacy should never have been passed because, under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, federal statute trumps state authority.

The lawsuit states that Lyman reached out to the Lieutenant Governor’s Office in September seeking access to the complete statewide voter registration database “pursuant to the National Voter Registration Act.” Lyman allegedly never received a response.

Following a subsequent request in October, Lyman was allegedly directed toward the public version of the statewide voter roll but was denied full access because of the state law.

On March 7, the Public Interest Legal Foundation on behalf of Lyman, notified Henderson that they believed she was in violation of the National Voter Registration Act, and that they would file a lawsuit if the state did not comply within 90 days.

“The Office of the Lieutenant Governor has received letters from the Public Interest Legal Foundation. We’re working through their requests and will respond according to law,” the lieutenant governor’s spokesperson told the Deseret News in a statement. “We’ve evaluated state election and privacy law, and the NVRA, and are confident in our compliance with both.”

The statement continues: “While our office does not comment on pending or active litigation, we have not been served a lawsuit and, according to the latest correspondence with PILF and according to the NVRA, the office has until mid August to respond to the requests and to address the concerns raised. The office will submit responses within that statutory timeline.”

What is the Public Interest Legal Foundation?

Over the past few years, the Public Interest Legal Foundation, based out of Alexandria, Virginia, has won a number of lawsuits focused on compliance with the National Voter Registration Act, including in Illinois, Maine and Maryland.

They have also experienced victories, which have been appealed, in ongoing cases in Hawaii, South Carolina, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

If Lyman’s lawsuit is successful, Utah’s voter privacy statute would be struck down.

The lawsuit also asks the judge to order Henderson to give Lyman “the full and complete Statewide Voter Registration List, including registrations classified as ‘private’ or improperly classified as ‘withheld.’”

This would include the names, addresses, contact information and voter registration dates for all Utah voters except for those who have applied for “withheld” status since the designation was created in 2020, according to Adams.

“We do this all over the country. We don’t lose these cases on the merits,” Adams said.

In every state where it obtains voter registration information, the Public Interest Legal Foundation then also conducts a review looking for voter roll issues.

A Utah legislative audit report released in December identified 1,400 deceased voters who were still on Utah voter rolls. Of these individuals, 700 likely received ballots and two cast a vote in the November 2023 election.

The audit also found 300 duplicate records and 450 records where multiple people were apparently registered using the same driver’s license number.

“We identified voters who appeared to cast ballots inappropriately in each of these areas of analysis,” the audit said.