As feds press for state data, officials may bolster privacy protections

Many states are entering 2026 with a major challenge that began last year: navigating increasing pressure from the federal government to hand over residents’ sensitive data. 

Since early 2025, the Trump administration has requested access to states’ voter rolls and administrative data for federally funded programs, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Such data includes personal information, like someone’s social security number or address, which could further help the federal government’s immigration enforcement efforts. 

Several states have already pushed back against the federal government’s requests, and they show little signs of backing down in 2026 despite growing pressure from the Trump administration, experts say.

While the federal government’s attempts to tap into state data aren’t new, states could face more hurdles to protecting their data privacy this year, said Thessalia Merivaki, professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. 

During President Donald Trump’s first term, for example, the administration created the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity in 2017 to request and collect voter registration data from states, she said. Mounting legal action from states and pushback from civil rights organizations ultimately lead to the commission halting its efforts. 

A commission like that lacks the legal standing to press states to comply with such requests, Merivaki explained, but now with data requests coming from formal federal agencies like the Justice Department, states could face firmer legal ramifications for noncompliance. 

“There are different tools to pressure states to comply, but at the same time, states have their tools too,” she said.  

Nearly 80 bills and resolutions that addressed state data privacy protections were introduced across 29 states last year, according to Maddy Dwyer, policy analyst at the Center for Democracy and Technology. 

In Connecticut, for example, policymakers passed a law in November that bans state and local agencies from disclosing nonpublic “information that provides the date, time or place where such individual may be located.” Such data includes details like a person’s address, location or hours of work or details about an appointment with a public agency, like a court proceeding. 

Laws like Connecticut’s are a growing trend across states that’s likely to gain traction this year, as they strengthen a state’s defense against data requests by impeding the collection of sensitive information in the first place and prohibiting “voluntary sharing” of, for example, data that could be leveraged by immigration enforcement authorities who request it, Dwyer said. 

Dwyer pointed to other policy efforts among states looking to make their data protections more comprehensive. Like Connecticut, many states are exploring how they can fortify general data protections, she said.

California lawmakers are considering a bill that would update an existing state law that mandates how state agencies manage personal data to include local agencies under its scope. If passed, the bill would restrict agencies from using personal information for any purpose outside of its original intent and from disclosing such data if it could be linked to the individual it pertains to, with exceptions. 

Some states are also targeting more specific approaches to limit the federal government’s reach into their data. An Illinois law that went into effect last week, for instance, prohibits schools from disclosing or threatening to disclose information related to a student’s immigration status to other entities like immigration or law enforcement agencies. 

More than 20 states have also filed lawsuits challenging the Trump administration’s efforts to access benefit program data, and more are likely to come up in 2026, Dwyer said.

Whether these legislative and legal efforts are successful moving forward is yet to be determined, but they are a “good indicator” of states’ continued attempts to thwart the federal government’s data demands, she said. 

“I think the big lesson learned is there are people pushing back against the requests … and there’s precedent for putting public benefits data privacy [and protecting people's sensitive data] at the forefront,” Dwyer said. “There's always hope that public interest advocates, state public [benefit] administrators and governors will band together to combat these requests.”