CONCORD, N.H. (AP) – A New Hampshire judge ruled Friday that the state Democratic Party can keep the money it made from selling a voter information list.

Judge Carol Ann Conboy rejected the state Republican Party’s argument that Democrats should not have profited from selling the voter file because it contained information that was released by the secretary of state under a law later found unconstitutional.

“Since both the major parties apparently relied, in good faith, on the validity of the statute in obtaining, and in turn, distributing the subject information, the court concludes that any further orders should not impose a liability on the New Hampshire Democratic Party,” Conboy ruled.

She ordered both parties not to distribute any voter information obtained as a result of the unconstitutional law.

The Democratic Party used some of the information to supplement files on voters it had compiled over the years.

Democratic Party Chairman Raymond Buckley said if the Legislature doesn’t make it possible to get the information from the state’s centralized database, the party will resume driving to each town to hand collect it.

The legal wrangling followed Conboy’s decision in November to strike down a new law that allowed the state to sell detailed voter information only to major political parties. Conboy found that the law was discriminatory because it put small political parties, such as the Libertarians, at a disadvantage.

Since then, there was disagreement over what to do about lists that already had been sold. Both the Republican and Democratic parties bought a voter list for about $450, and the Democrats then sold access to its file to five presidential candidates for $65,000 each.

Republicans tried to force Democrats to produce all the contracts they signed with the candidates, along with sample pages of the Democrats’ voter list as it existed before and after it received the state-generated list last spring. But lawyers for the Democratic Party argued that doing so would reveal the party’s “trade secrets” and that the request “borders on abuse of process.”

Conboy sided with Democrats, ruling that Republicans would not be given the material they sought.

The state GOP and Secretary of State William Gardner also wanted the Democratic Party to retrieve the information it sold and give its profits to the state, since the list originally was generated by the state. The Democrats say the sales were legal at the time they were made.

Democrats also argued it wasn’t possible to “unring the bell.”

“This case was not filed as an action seeking compensatory damages based on ‘unjust enrichment’ or other equitable or legal theory, and the Libertarian Party does not now seek such relief,” Conboy ruled Friday.

She said to order Democrats to “disgorge” the money “would expand the litigation far beyond its initial scope.”

She noted the secretary of state suffered no financial loss.

Republican Party Chairman Fergus Cullen said he has not ruled out an appeal.

“This was a Democratic fundraising scheme from day one,” he said.

He said he understood why the judge ruled the fundraising was out of the scope of the case because it was initially presented as equal access to the voter file.

“The value of the list came from having the secretary of state certify that it was the best and most up-to-date voter list available,” said Cullen. “Otherwise, the New Hampshire Democrats could have just sold the file they assembled on their own.”