TRENTON, N.J. — New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport is heading back to court against the Trump Administration — again.
Davenport joined a coalition of 21 attorneys general and Pennsylvania on Thursday in filing two lawsuits aimed at blocking federal agencies from obtaining a database containing sensitive information on approximately 17 million commercial drivers.
The litigation challenges requests by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for records maintained through the Commercial Driver’s License Information System (CDLIS).
Those records can include names, dates of birth, driver’s license numbers and Social Security numbers.
According to Davenport’s office, FMCSA demanded five years of CDLIS data from the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA) and threatened more than $10 million in federal grants and contracts if the organization refused. DHS subsequently issued an administrative subpoena seeking similar information.
“New Jersey has one of the strongest data privacy laws in the country, and we will not allow the Trump Administration to illegally misuse the private information of our residents,” Davenport declared.
The coalition argues that the federal demands violate privacy laws and the Administrative Procedure Act, contending that states own the underlying information and Washington has failed to establish a legitimate need for such sweeping access.
Davenport’s latest lawsuit is hardly an isolated event. It’s a trend which appears to be all-consuming in the early stages of her tenure as New Jersey’s top law enforcement officer.
Since Gov. Mikie Sherrill took office in January, Davenport has made litigation against the Trump Administration a recurring feature of her tenure, joining or initiating challenges involving immigration enforcement, federal spending, Medicaid, election policy, energy regulations, environmental rules and access to government databases.
The sheer frequency raises a separate question: where does legitimate state-federal legal disagreement end and taxpayer-funded political resistance begin?
The latest data-privacy fight is particularly noteworthy given Trenton’s simultaneous resistance to federal requests for state records amid New Jersey’s ongoing voter-registration scandal. Approximately 6,600 people who identified themselves to the Motor Vehicle Commission as noncitizens nevertheless ended up registered to vote between 2023 and 2024, with state officials acknowledging that hundreds may have cast ballots.
That controversy has fueled demands for greater federal scrutiny of New Jersey’s voter rolls and MVC procedures.
One thing appears increasingly certain: under Sherrill and Davenport, suing the Trump Administration isn’t an occasional response to extraordinary circumstances.
It’s becoming the primary “governing” strategy.
