Supreme Court Allows Use of Federal Data to Verify Voter Citizenship

The Supreme Court ruled Friday that states can use select government data to verify citizenship for voters on election rolls, a decision that supports President Donald Trump's initiatives to prevent voter fraud.

The ruling lifts a hold previously placed by lower courts on the Trump administration's effort to allow states to access federal data, including Social Security information, for citizenship verification purposes.

The decision comes 39 days before the midterm elections and is seen as a significant victory for the president.

In March, President Trump issued an executive order directing the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to establish systems for verifying voter citizenship and immigration status. The Department of Homeland Security subsequently modified the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system to permit local governments to utilize this data for voter roll verification.

Voting rights groups had challenged this modification, citing concerns about potential violations of federal privacy laws. A district judge had initially barred the federal government from using the altered system pending the resolution of the case.

The Supreme Court, however, determined that Congress had authorized the Department of Homeland Security to obtain immigration and citizenship status information from other federal agencies, including the Social Security Administration. The majority opinion stated that extending this authority to states aligns with the federal government's duty to assist in such verifications.

"The Federal Government has an obligation to respond to requests from state and local election officials seeking to verify the citizenship of voters," the majority opinion read. The court added that the lower court's injunction "prevents the Federal Government from using the program it believes is best suited to the task."

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, dissented. Jackson wrote in her dissent that "The 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."