A federal district judge on Monday allowed [opinion, PDF] President Donald Trump’s election commission to move forward by dismissing the need for a prior privacy impact assessment before collecting voter data. US District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly [official profile] denied a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction requested [JURIST report] by Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) against the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity (PACEI). Kollar-Kotelly determined that only agencies must go through a privacy impact assessment required by E-Government Act, § 208(b) [DOJ background]. “The record presently before the Court is insufficient to demonstrate that the Commission is an ‘agency’ for purposes of the APA. First, the Executive Order indicates that the Commission is purely advisory in nature, and that it shall disband shortly after it delivers a report to the President.”

Trump established PACEI in May via executive order [text] . Earlier this month PACEI Vice Chair and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach sent out a letter [text, PDF] requesting voter information from all 50 states. A majority of the states rejected that request. Like EPIC, the ACLU also filed suit [JURIST report] earlier this month.