New Jersey and a group of other mostly Democratic-led states sued the U.S. Department of Transportation over the federal government’s demands for Social Security numbers and other private information from a cross-state database of commercial driver’s licenses.

New Jersey, 20 other states, and the District of Columbia are seeking to block the release of information from a database managed by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators that the Trump administration has demanded under threat of withholding $10 million in funding that maintains tools states use to ensure truck drivers are licensed somewhere.

“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,” New Jersey Attorney General Jen Davenport said in a statement.

The lawsuit was filed Thursday in federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia.

The association maintains the Commercial Driver’s License Information System, a database the Department of Transportation and other federal transit authorities have acknowledged is functionally operated by the states.

Even today, individuals applying for an account that can query the database through a Department of Transportation form are told the data belong to the states, the attorneys general said in the suit.

“AAMVA and the Secretary are neither the owners of the information the States provide nor the ultimate recipients of that information; rather, their sole role is to facilitate the exchanges of information between and among States,” the states said in their lawsuit.

The states argued the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s demand for data is barred by the Privacy Act of 1974, the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act, various state privacy laws, and contractual provisions with states.

The administration had also violated the Administrative Procedures Act by failing to consult with states — or even notify them — before seeking to seize data they owned from a contractor.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly sought to claim vast amounts of personal information Americans have given to governments under legal guarantees of privacy, including when registering to vote or filing their taxes, though courts have routinely slapped those attempts down as unlawful. Last month, a federal judge dismissed a Trump administration lawsuit against New Jersey Secretary of State Dale Caldwell seeking private voter data.

“We will not allow New Jerseyans’ safety or the employment of our CDL drivers to be jeopardized by yet another unlawful request for private data,” Davenport said.

The states said the federal government’s demand and funding threat would necessarily harm public safety and their economies.

The states query the Commercial Driver’s License Information System or a separate database maintained by the association whenever any individual applies for any driver’s license, and cutting the association’s funding could stunt economies and worsen road safety, the states said.

It could also create licensing delays or force states unwilling to bear increased road risks to stop issuing commercial driver’s licenses altogether.

Moreover, the federal government is lying about why it wanted the data, the states alleged. Though the administration initially told the association it would use the data to verify commercial driver’s licenses, its demand for data coincided with identical demands from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The states argued that it’s clear the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration intends to share the data it receives with Homeland Security officials “for immigration enforcement purposes.”

Last month, the Department of Transportation said it was teaming up with the Department of Homeland Security to crack down on “fraudulent and illegal practices” at commercial driver’s license schools. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy said his department has removed more than 24,000 drivers from the roads for failing to speak English and forced states to cancel more than 28,000 licenses issued to foreign drivers.