Washington — The Supreme Court on Friday backed the Trump administration’s effort to use a controversial federal database to examine state voter rolls for possible noncitizens, temporarily blocking a lower-court ruling that found the expanded system violated federal privacy laws.
In a 6-3 decision, the justices granted the Justice Department’s request for emergency relief and paused a June ruling by a Washington, D.C., judge. That ruling had blocked the Department of Homeland Security’s revamped database, known as the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE. The administration permits states and local governments to use the system to verify the citizenship and immigration status of registered voters.
U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan concluded that the Trump administration had “knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote” by expanding the SAVE system.
The ruling is unlikely to have a major effect on the upcoming midterm elections. Federal law prohibits states from systematically removing ineligible voters from registration lists during the 90 days before an election, and the Nov. 3 general election is less than 40 days away.
In its unsigned order, the Supreme Court said voting rights groups’ arguments that the modified database is unlawful “likely lack merit.” The justices also indicated that they are likely to overturn the district court’s conclusion that the revamped system violated federal law.
The court said immigration law requires the federal government to respond when state and local election officials ask it to verify voters’ citizenship. “The order below prevents the Federal Government from using the program it believes is best suited to the task,” the justices wrote.
The justices added that the district court’s prohibition on the expanded database, including its use for individual inquiries, “inhibits the Federal Government’s efforts to assist state and local agencies in the proper administration of the midterm elections.”
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. In her dissent, Jackson said states could continue using the revised system for individualized voter-roll maintenance even without the broader database changes.
“[T]he harm caused by burdening or disenfranchising even a few lawful voters outweighs the nonexistent harm that the Government experiences when it is prevented from taking an action that it likely lacks the authority to take,” Jackson wrote. Sotomayor and Kagan joined her opinion.
The SAVE system is part of President Trump’s broader effort to uncover evidence of widespread noncitizen voting in federal elections. Such voting has largely been debunked and shown to be extremely rare.
Groups challenging the expanded database have warned that it supplies states with inaccurate citizenship information. They say the unreliable data has already led some members to have their voter registrations canceled improperly.
“Today’s decision is profoundly disappointing, as it puts millions of Americans at risk of being unlawfully targeted by the administration’s unreliable voter purge database weeks before the midterm elections,” the plaintiffs’ coalition said in a statement. “However, this case is not over. The D.C. district court ruled that the expanded SAVE program violated multiple laws. We will be doing everything in our power to protect Americans’ voting and privacy rights by ensuring that the district court decision stands.”
The SAVE database
The SAVE database was altered after an executive order Mr. Trump signed in March of last year. The order sought to impose a new proof-of-citizenship requirement on people registering to vote. Federal judges have since blocked the citizenship-related provisions.
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The directive instructed DHS and the Social Security Administration to build a database allowing state and local officials to check the citizenship or immigration status of people seeking to register to vote, as well as those already listed on state voter rolls.
That directive prompted a sweeping expansion of the existing SAVE system, which states have traditionally used to determine eligibility for certain public benefits and licenses. The revised system added records belonging to natural-born citizens, incorporated Social Security Administration data including Social Security numbers, and allowed participating entities to conduct bulk searches.
The League of Women Voters, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and five individuals responded by suing DHS, the SSA and the Justice Department. They argued that combining sensitive records from multiple agencies was unlawful. The plaintiffs also said some states had worked with the federal government to process their voter databases through SAVE, resulting in U.S. citizens being mistakenly classified as noncitizens and removed from voter rolls.
In court filings, the Trump administration argued that SAVE, which has existed in some form since 1986, was being used pursuant to a “clear congressional directive to break down information silos between government agencies.” Officials also maintained that improper voter removals had been rare.
Sooknanan rejected those arguments in her June ruling, saying they “border on the absurd.” She said the administration had “haphazardly combined and repurposed the private information of millions of Americans, including citizenship data that they knew to be unreliable,” causing some states to remove U.S. citizens from voter rolls “based on inaccurate information.”
The judge ruled that the expanded system, along with related notices issued by DHS and the SSA, was “contrary to law, arbitrary and capricious, in excess of statutory authority, and without observance of procedure required by law.”
Earlier this month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit declined to pause Sooknanan’s order. The Trump administration then went to the Supreme Court seeking relief.
In filings with the court, Solicitor General D. John Sauer called Sooknanan’s ruling “indefensible” and said it “threatens the integrity of upcoming elections.” He also said the judge exceeded her authority and that the voting rights groups that brought the initial lawsuit did not have the legal right to sue.
“SAVE does not disqualify any voter; instead, it merely notifies the States whether the federal government can confirm citizenship,” Sauer wrote. “Thus, any voter injury is caused by the States, not by the federal government, and would not be redressed by the relief the court entered against the federal government.”
In response to the government’s request, lawyers for the plaintiff groups argued in court filings that “Congress has not authorized the federal government to create a master database of U.S. citizens,” and said the government “has recklessly created an error-laden master citizenship database that endangers millions of Americans’ privacy and voting rights.”
