Supreme Court Allows Trump Administration to Access Federal Database for Voter Verification
The ruling reverses a lower court decision that had blocked the use of the SAVE system.
The Supreme Court on Friday ruled that the Trump administration can utilize the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database to assist state and local officials in verifying the citizenship of voters for the upcoming midterm elections. This decision overturns a previous order by a federal district court that had halted the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) access to the database.
The SAVE system, a 40-year-old database, was updated following a March 2025 executive order by President Trump aimed at ensuring only U.S. citizens participate in national elections. The DHS had expanded its use of SAVE to include natural-born citizens and allowed bulk searches using names, birthdays, and Social Security numbers, not just specific agency-issued identification numbers.
DC US District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan had previously ordered the DHS to cease using the database in June, stating that the administration's actions infringed on privacy rights and that Congress had established protections against such centralized data banks. The judge noted concerns that the DHS had "haphazardly combined and repurposed the private information of millions of Americans, including citizenship data that they knew to be unreliable," potentially leading to the removal of eligible U.S. citizens from voter rolls based on inaccurate information.
In its unsigned opinion, the court's six conservative justices stated that while states are prohibited from purging voters within 90 days of an election, the DHS's use of the modified SAVE program for "individualized inquiries" was being inhibited by the lower court's order. The justices concluded that the order "inhibits the Federal Government’s efforts to assist state and local agencies in the proper administration of the midterm elections."