The Supreme Court on Friday cleared the way for the Trump administration to move forward with its plan to use a modified centralized database to verify voters’ citizenship. In a seven-page opinion issued just 39 days before the Nov. 3, 2026, election, the justices paused a ruling by a federal judge in Washington, D.C., that had blocked the government from doing so on the ground that it violated (among other things) federal privacy laws.
The unsigned opinion for the majority indicated that the lower court’s order “inhibits the Federal Government’s efforts to assist state and local agencies in the proper administration of the midterm elections.”
In a dissenting opinion joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson called Friday’s decision a “questionable interim ruling[] about two statutory provisions” that the Supreme Court “has never before interpreted.” She also contended that the majority “focuses only on the harms the Government will purportedly suffer absent a stay, disregarding the harms that the” use of the modified database “has caused, and will likely continue to cause, to lawful voters.”
The dispute dates back to late March, when President Donald Trump issued an executive order that (among other things) directed the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to set up systems that would permit state and local governments to verify voters’ citizenship and immigration status. Those agencies then modified the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database, known as the SAVE system, to include the records of U.S.-born citizens, to give it access to Social Security numbers, and to allow users to conduct multiple searches simultaneously.
The League of Women Voters and the Electronic Privacy Information Center went to federal court in Washington, where they challenged the changes to the SAVE system. On June 22, U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan agreed with the challengers that the modified SAVE system violates federal privacy laws, the Social Security Act, and the federal laws governing administrative agencies, and she barred the government from using it.
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.” Moreover, she continued, “states have partnered with the federal government to access the database and are actively removing United States citizens from voter rolls based on inaccurate information.”
On Sept. 4, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit turned down the government’s request to pause Sooknanan’s order while its appeal moves forward, but the court fast-tracked the appeal, directing the litigants to quickly propose a briefing schedule. The litigants subsequently agreed to postpone any briefing in that court until the Supreme Court acts on the Trump administration’s emergency appeal.
U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer went to the Supreme Court on Sept. 8, asking the justices to freeze Sooknanan’s ruling while the litigation continues. Sooknanan’s decision, he wrote, was an “indefensible order that threatens the integrity of upcoming elections by vacating the federal government’s authority to internally use Social Security data when fulfilling its duty to respond to requests by States to verify the citizenship of individuals for voting and other purposes.” Moreover, he argued, Sooknanan did not have the power to enter her order because the challengers do not have a legal right to sue, known as standing. Among other things, he contended, the federal government is not the source of any injury that the challengers and their members might suffer, because the SAVE system “merely notifies the States whether the federal government can confirm citizenship.”
Lawyers for the League of Women Voters and the Electronic Privacy Information Center on Sept. 15 asked the justices to leave Sookanan’s ruling in place for now. Nikhel Sus, the lawyer representing the challengers, argued that “the government has recklessly created an error-laden master citizenship database that endangers millions of Americans’ privacy and voting rights.”
The groups also insisted that, despite the government’s argument to the contrary, they have a legal right to sue. The Supreme Court’s own cases, Sus wrote, have “repeatedly recognized that a plaintiff has standing if ‘“third parties will likely react” to the government [action] “in predictable ways” that will likely cause . . . the plaintiff’s injury.’” Here, Sus continued, “‘additional voter verification and potential voter disenfranchisement is “the predictable effect of” the federal government incorrectly informing a state that an individual may be ineligible to vote.’ Indeed,” he observed, “the government concedes this is the intended effect.”
And if the federal government were correct that a provision of federal immigration law supersedes any other federal law, like the Social Security Act or the Privacy Act, that might prevent DHS from obtaining or disclosing information, Sus wrote, it would mean that DHS would have “unlimited power to vacuum up millions of Americans’ sensitive information from SSA (or any other agency) and disclose it in bulk to states however it wants.”
In its opinion on Friday morning, the majority agreed that the groups have standing to pursue their claim. One of the groups’ members is registered to vote in Louisiana, which uses the modified SAVE system, the opinion indicated; because Social Security records do not show that she is a naturalized citizen, she would have had to provide additional proof that she is a U.S. citizen, which is the kind of injury that gives her (and, as a result, the groups) a right to sue.
However, the majority continued, the challengers are not likely to prevail on the merits of their claims – an important factor that courts consider in deciding whether to award temporary relief. The majority rejected the challengers’ contention that the use of the modified SAVE system violates the Social Security Act, the Privacy Act, and the federal law governing administrative agencies. It explained that in a federal immigration law enacted in 1996, “Congress … separately and expressly authorized DHS to request and receive information relating to citizenship and immigration status from other agencies, including SSA.”
The Supreme Court has also “often granted” review (another factor in determining whether to award emergency relief), the majority wrote, “where a lower court has set aside an important federal program” – which, it appeared to suggest, the modified SAVE system is.
Moreover, the majority added, the federal government will suffer permanent harm (yet another factor that courts consider) if the district court’s order remains in place. Under federal immigration law, the majority reasoned, “the Federal Government has an obligation to respond to requests from state and local election officials seeking to verify the citizenship of voters. The order below prevents the Federal Government from using the program it believes is best suited to the task.”
The majority acknowledged that a different federal law, the National Voter Registration Act, bars state and local governments from systematically removing voters from their election rolls in the 90-day run-up to federal elections. “To be sure,” the majority wrote, “that moratorium limits the potential impact of staying” Sooknanan’s order. But if that order were to remain in place, the majority emphasized, state and local governments would still be barred from “conduct[ing] individualized inquiries, which are permitted under federal law during this period.”
Jackson rejected the majority’s interpretation of federal immigration law as authorizing the changes to the SAVE system and “displac[ing] any other statutory restrictions on the disclosure of citizenship information.” Among other things, she wrote, the government has never relied on this interpretation before. In other recent cases, she said, the Supreme Court has required a “clear statement” – not found in the provision at issue here – from Congress giving an agency such a “transformative expansion in its regulatory authority.”
Jackson conceded that the majority’s opinion “will likely have minimal short-term impact, as States will at most conduct individualized voter-roll maintenance using the modified SAVE system ahead of the November elections.” But, she continued, “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.”
