People vote on election day at Brooklyn Avenue Elementary School on Nov. 8, 2016 in Los Angeles, CA. | Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images Judge denies injunction against Trump voter fraud panel

A federal judge has turned down an effort to force President Donald Trump's controversial voter fraud commission to open its first official meeting to in-person, public attendance and to force disclosure of more records about the group's work.

U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said there wasn't enough indication that the panel planned to defy a federal sunshine law, particularly after the commission published thousands of pages of information online and announced plans to make more data public in a timely fashion.


Kollar-Kotelly's ruling said there was no sign that the commission's procedures were impeding public debate about its actions, particularly a hotly-debated request that states turn over public voter registration data for study by the panel.

"There is no doubt that the Commission and its request for voter roll information have generated substantial public interest and debate. Nonetheless, Plaintiff has failed to demonstrate that, absent preliminary injunctive relief, its ability to engage in this public debate would be substantially impaired in a manner that is both 'certain and great,'" wrote Kollar-Kotelly, an appointee of President Bill Clinton.

The panel is planning to meet Wednesday in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in the White House complex. Commission chair Vice President Mike Pence is expected to attend, which officials said presented security concerns that preclude attendance by the general public—at least for this session..

Kollar-Kotelly said the Trump administration's plan to stream the commission meeting over the internet was sufficient to meet the requirement for public access, according to federal rules interpreting the Federal Advisory Committee Act.

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"The regulations anticipate that some advisory committee meetings will be made publicly accessible via internet access, and that this is permissible so long as this method is 'reasonably accessible to the public,' and can accommodate 'a reasonable number of interested members of the public," the judge wrote. "Based on Defendants’ representations, the livestreaming service offered for the July 19 meeting appears likely to satisfy both of these requirements, and indeed will offer more members of the public the opportunity to observe proceedings than had only physical access been permitted."

Kollar-Kotelly issued similar preliminary rulings Tuesday in two different suits: one brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and another brought by the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which immediately appealed the decision in its case to the D.C. Circuit.

Both groups claimed that their suits spurred more openness from the panel than was taking place before the cases were brought.

"It took our lawsuit demanding full transparency in accordance with federal law for the White House to finally disclose some, though not all, materials concerning the so-called Commission on Election Integrity," the Lawyers Committee's Kristen Clarke said. "While we are disappointed with the Court’s ruling denying our request for emergency relief, we are encouraged that the Court recognized that more documents are likely to be disclosed as our case continues. With the voting rights of millions of Americans at stake, we will continue the fight to ensure full transparency with respect to this so-called Commission’s activities."

"Ahead of this ruling, the commission acquiesced to several of the demands in our lawsuit, including releasing a number of documents and creating a website," said Theresa Lee of the ACLU. “The standard for emergency relief is high. Today’s decision does not mark the end of our fight for transparency and public accountability.”

Commission Vice Chair Kris Kobach welcomed Kollar-Kotelly's decisions.

"We are not surprised by the ruling because the lawsuit itself was a perfect example of partisan special interest groups looking to prevent a bipartisan commission from conducting a public meeting to discuss how best to improve our election system," Kobach said in a statement. "To prevent the meeting would have only served the purpose of preventing the public from learning information that they have every right to know about the integrity of elections in this country."

The commission was also hit with a new suit Tuesday claiming that its existence was rooted in racial bias.

The suit, filed by the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and an Alabama-based group representing current and former prisoners, the Ordinary People Society, levels a broad set of legal claims at the commission. They include Constitutional due process and right-to-vote violations, as well as assertions that the make-up of the panel is so "blatantly skewed" that it violates federal law.

"The creation of the Commission, and its pending investigation into allegations of voter fraud, were motivated by racial discrimination against voters of color," the 56-page complaint filed in in U.S. District Court in Manhattan says. "Commission members’ public statements and political actions make clear that the Commission is stacked with members who share the President’s conviction, not founded in credible evidence, that voter fraud is rampant in U.S. elections."

The suit also alleges that Trump lacks any legal authority to set up a commission that will investigate the actions of individual voters.

"It involves the creation of a new executive organ that is already investigating (or attempting to investigate) individuals. Nothing in either the Constitution, or in any act of Congress, authorizes the President to appoint a new Commission to investigate individual voters based on unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud," the suit says.

The new case joins a growing list of suits against the voter fraud commission, including another one brought in Washington that focuses primarily on how the panel plans to store the voter data it is gathering. That suit, filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, argues that the panel hasn't complied with federal laws governing collection and storage of personal information.