By Marilyn Odendahl
The Indiana Citizen
September 3, 2025
The Indiana Citizen Education Foundation, parent of The Indiana Citizen, filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against the Office of the Indiana Secretary of State and the Office of the Indiana Attorney General, seeking access to the list of nearly 600,000 Hoosier voters state officials sent to the federal government last October.
Filed in Marion County Superior Court, the lawsuit – Indiana Citizen Education Foundation, Inc. v. Office of the Indiana Secretary of State and Office of the Indiana Attorney General, 49D06-2509-PL-041604 – claims the secretary of state’s office and the attorney general’s office are violating the Indiana Access to Public Records Act by withholding the list and asks the court to issue an order compelling the defendants to release the document. Specifically, the complaint, filed with multiple exhibits, asserts the state officials “have not cited any valid exemptions” to withhold either the entire list or portions of it, and their refusals to make the list available constitute an “unlawful denial of disclosure and interference with Plaintiff’s right to inspect and copy public records.”
The Indiana Citizen has been fighting for access to the list ever since Indiana Secretary of State Diego Morales and Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita announced on Oct. 17, 2024, that they had sent a list of 585,774 registered Hoosier voters to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Morales and Rokita said they wanted the federal agency to verify the citizenship status of each individual listed.
Even while they acknowledge existence of the list, Morales and Rokita have repeatedly denied requests to make the document publicly available. They have asserted state statute prevents the release of the list, citing to Indiana Code section 3-7-26.4-2, which prohibits disclosure of any part of the voter rolls except in limited circumstances.
However, in an advisory opinion issued in February 2025, former Indiana Public Access Counselor Luke Britt found in favor of The Citizen. Britt concluded the secretary of state and the attorney general had “improperly withheld a list from inspection and failed to allow inspection within a reasonable time.”
Subsequently, the attorney general’s office did offer limited access to the list in March. The Citizen was told it could only view the list in person and could only make handwritten notes or transcriptions of the document.
The Citizen tried to get the terms of the access expanded but, after being unsuccessful, accepted the conditions on July 3. Six days later, the secretary of state’s and attorney general’s offices withdrew their offer because they had filed a request for reconsideration with newly appointed Public Access Counselor Jennifer Ruby.
In a statement, Bill Moreau, president of the Indiana Citizen Education Foundation Inc. and publisher of The Indiana Citizen, said filing a lawsuit was the only option available to get the list.
“The Attorney General and Secretary of State have left us no choice,” Moreau said in an email. “They continue to raise the specter of perhaps thousands of criminals on Indiana’s voter registration rolls who allegedly broke the law when they registered to vote without being American citizens. Ten months after they first waved this bloody shirt and began stonewalling us, they’ve forced us to sue them to release the names of Hoosier voters whose citizenship they have called into question.”
The Indiana Citizen Education Foundation is being represented in this case by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
A coalition of nonpartisan organizations and voting advocacy groups criticized the existence of the list in October of last year, when Morales and Rokita first announced it had been sent to USCIS. In a letter, the coalition warned that the National Voter Registration Act prohibited the offices of the secretary of state and attorney general from removing individuals from the state’s voting rolls less than 90 days before the Nov. 5, 2024, election.
“Your Offices have had nearly two years since the last federal General Election to review the citizenship status of Indiana voters and conduct any voter list maintenance procedures,” the coalition stated in its letter. “The assertion in the final paragraph of your letter to USCIS that voter list maintenance procedures are necessary because ‘election day is a little over three weeks away’ ignores important federally-guaranteed voter protections and suggests, at best, poor planning, and, at worst, an intent to intimidate eligible voters and to decrease public confidence in the integrity of Indiana’s elections.”
Morales and Rokita claimed that the individuals on the USCIS list had not provided the proper identification, such as a Social Security number or a driver’s license number or they were living overseas, when they registered to vote. Also in a document included with the filings to the public access counselor, Morales defended the move to verify citizenship, describing the process to register to vote as an “honor system.”
“Indiana has been a model for election laws, and frankly, I don’t anticipate learning that many non-citizens have landed on our voter registration rolls,” Morales said in a public statement made after the list was announced. “Still, voter concerns about non-citizens unfettered access to registration and voting exists, and even looms large for the important upcoming election. I’m not about to dismiss Hoosier’s (sic) concerns without first inquiring into the facts.”
After Morales and Rokita publicly declared they were seeking to confirm the legal status of roughly 13% of the 4.67 million Hoosiers on the state’s voter rolls as of Jan. 2, 2024, The Indiana Citizen filed an open records request on Oct. 21, 2024, to get the list. Nine days later, the Indiana Citizen Education Foundation filed a formal complaint with the public access counselor and filed a second formal complaint on Jan. 10, 2025, when the state officials denied access to the list.
In its second complaint, the Citizen Education Foundation dismissed the attorney general’s argument that state statute prohibited the release of the list because it was only a portion of the state’s entire voter rolls. The nonprofit news platform pointed out that the secretary of state had already publicized the creation of the list and had shared it with the USCIS, but would not allow the public to see the list because it contained only some of the registered voters.
“The General Assembly enacted IC 3-7-26.4-2 for one obvious salutary purpose only: to shield the SOS from countless, time-consuming data-sorting requests,” the Indiana Citizen Education Foundation asserted, noting state law compels the secretary of state “to reject the predictable, myriad requests” for subsets of the Indiana voter registration file. “But it is inconceivable that the General Assembly would have envisioned this provision to permit the SOS to create (a list with) three subsets of registered voters, hand them to the AG, send them to a federal agency, hold a news conference announcing their existence, but thereafter claim it is ‘statutorily prohibited’ from releasing these records.”
The attorney general’s office responded to the consolidated complaint by reiterating state law did not allow the secretary of state to make the list accessible to the public. The attorney general asserted Morales passed along the list to Rokita, because they both are responsible for safeguarding the state’s elections and they then sent the list to the federal government as part of the administration of the general election.
“The voter information that was shared is part of an effort to confirm whether a subset of voters lacking certain information are non-citizens,” the attorney general’s office said in its response. “This is a function of election administration in coordination with the OAG as the State’s chief legal officer. Thus, the lists were shared under Ind. Code (section) 3-7-26.4-2(1) which allows the SOS to provide any part of the compilation of the voter registration information as provided in Ind. Code (chapter) 3-7-26.3.”
Britt, the former public access counselor, nodded to the Citizen Education Foundation’s argument about the purpose of I.C. 3-7-26.4-2, but said the advisory opinions “cannot ascribe legislative intent” and were “strictly limited to the rote, plain reading of the law.” He found that since the Indiana Election Division did not create the list sent to USCIS, that statute did not apply and the denial of public access was improper.
Although the attorney general’s office said the PAC’s opinion “suffers from oversimplification, reliance on unsupported evidence and conclusions, and incorrect application of statutes, it offered the Indiana Citizen Education Foundation limited access to the USCIS list in a March 14 letter to Moreau. The list that would be provided for in-person inspection would only contain the names and addresses of the registered voters and not include other information, such as the date of birth, gender, and voting history for each individual. Also, the attorney general said, the Citizen Education Foundation could not duplicate the document but would be permitted to make a handwritten transcript, or notes, abstracts and memoranda.
The foundation objected in April to the limited public access offer, arguing it failed to comply with APRA’s requirement, which specifically gives the right to receive and make copies of public records. Receiving no response, the nonprofit renewed its objection on June 4, 2025.
On that same day, the attorney general and secretary of state asked the newly appointed public access counselor, Jennifer Ruby, to reconsider the previous PAC ruling on the USCIS list.
The Citizen Education Foundation accepted the attorney general office’s conditions for inspecting the list on July 3. In an email response sent July 9, the state officials withdrew the offer, saying they wanted to put things on hold until the PAC makes a decision on their reconsideration request.
In a statement, Moreau apologized to Indiana taxpayers for having to pay for the cost of defending litigation which he says could have been avoided if the state officials had released the list. He also thanked the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and its Indiana legal counsel, Kristopher Cundiff, for providing experienced representation, pro bono.
“Quite simply, we couldn’t have afforded to hire legal counsel to represent us in such an important matter,” Moreau said.
(Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include the time-stamped complaint and exhibits filed with the Marion County Superior Court.)
Dwight Adams, an editor and writer based in Indianapolis, edited this article. He is a former content editor, copy editor and digital producer at The Indianapolis Star and IndyStar.com, and worked as a planner for other newspapers, including the Louisville Courier Journal.
The Indiana Citizen is a nonpartisan, nonprofit platform dedicated to increasing the number of informed and engaged Hoosier citizens. We are operated by the Indiana Citizen Education Foundation, Inc., a 501(c)(3) public charity. For questions about the story, contact Marilyn Odendahl at marilyn.odendahl@indianacitizen.org.
