Washington — A divided federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that the Justice Department is not entitled to Michigan's voter registration list containing sensitive information from voters in the state.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit is now the first appeals court to weigh in on the Trump administration's efforts to obtain the unredacted voter rolls from more than two dozen states. At issue in the case decided by the 6th Circuit is the Justice Department's demand for the information from Michigan.

In a 2-1 decision, the 6th Circuit said a provision of federal civil rights law does not entitle the government to Michigan's voter registration list, which contains the names, birth dates, driver's license numbers and partial Social Security numbers of all registered voters in the state, among other information.

That 1960 law, Judge Andre Mathis wrote, gave the government "power to ensure that everyone who had the right to vote could freely exercise that right. But today, the government invokes Title III for an inverse purpose — to ensure that some people have not voted." He was joined in the majority by Judge Guy Cole Jr. Judge John Nalbandian dissented.

The Justice Department first asked nearly every state and the District of Columbia for copies of their statewide voter registration lists last summer and said the information was needed to ensure compliance with list-maintenance requirements of two federal voting laws, the Help America Vote Act and the National Voter Registration Act.

After Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, as well as officials from 30 states and D.C., refused to hand over the unredacted voter rolls, the Justice Department sued the states and sought court orders requiring them to turn over the information. Benson did provide the government with the public version of Michigan's voter registration list, but argued the government did not have the authority to demand confidential voter information.

So far, nine district courts have dismissed the lawsuits filed against the states, including the Justice Department's case in Michigan. In that court fight, U.S. District Judge Hala Jarbou said the federal laws cited by the Trump administration do not allow it to obtain the voting records and warned that interpreting the National Voter Registration Act to require the disclosure of private information submitted for voter registration "would potentially cause the statute to impose an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote guaranteed by the First Amendment." 

Jarbou was appointed to the federal bench by Mr. Trump in his first term.

The 6th Circuit affirmed the district court's ruling, with the two judges in the majority agreeing that "Title III's narrow text cannot withstand the weight of the government's broad request."

Since Mr. Trump took office for his second term, his administration has undertaken sweeping efforts to overhaul U.S. elections as Republicans fight to maintain control of Congress in November's midterm elections. The president has signed two executive orders that sought to impose new requirements for mail ballots and voter registration, but they have come under scrutiny in the courts.

Earlier Wednesday, a federal judge in Massachusetts ruled key provisions of the directive signed by Mr. Trump last year were unconstitutional and permanently blocked their implementation nationwide. One of the measures sought to require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote, while another imposed conditions on federal funds to specific states not counting mail ballots that arrive after Election Day.