Washington — The Trump administration on Tuesday urged the Supreme Court to step into a voting-rights lawsuit and clear the way for states to use a disputed federal data system to examine voter rolls ahead of the midterm elections.
A federal judge ruled in June that the administration broke the law when it developed a centralized database known as “Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements,” or SAVE, which includes private information about Americans. U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan found that some states had relied on the database to wrongly remove U.S. citizens from voter registration lists.
The SAVE system was tied to President Trump’s broader government-wide effort to identify evidence of widespread noncitizen voting in federal elections — claims that have been largely debunked and repeatedly shown to involve rare cases.
In her ruling, Sooknanan wrote that the “federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote” through its attempt to put the SAVE system in place. She concluded that the administration violated three separate federal laws in the process.
Over the weekend, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected the Trump administration’s bid to pause the district court order blocking use of the SAVE database.
In a Supreme Court filing submitted Tuesday, Solicitor General D. John Sauer described Sooknanan’s decision as “indefensible” and argued that it “threatens the integrity of upcoming elections.” Sauer also contended that the judge overstepped her authority and that the voting rights organizations behind the lawsuit lacked the legal standing required to sue. He asked the justices to lift Sooknanan’s order and permit the government to use the SAVE system.
“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.”
The filing follows another emergency appeal in which the Trump administration again asked the Supreme Court to revive new Postal Service rules affecting mail voting in the approaching midterm elections.
The SAVE database was created by several federal agencies in response to an executive order signed by Mr. Trump last year that sought to impose a new proof-of-citizenship requirement for those registering to vote. The order directed the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to create a database that would effectively allow state and local officials to verify citizenship or immigration status of individuals trying to register to vote.
The executive order drew several legal challenges, and key provisions have been blocked.
Still, the directive triggered the overhaul of the existing SAVE system. It was modified to include the records of natural-born citizens; to access records from the SSA, including Social Security numbers; and to permit bulk searches of records by entities that use the database.
