Key facts
- The Supreme Court revived an expanded immigration database used by the Trump administration to check voter citizenship status.
- The database, known as SAVE, allows searches using Social Security numbers.
- Critics argue the system risks disenfranchising eligible voters by misidentifying naturalized citizens as noncitizens.
- A district judge had previously blocked the system, calling it haphazard and unreliable.
- The administration argued the system is crucial for election integrity ahead of the midterm elections.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday revived an expanded immigration database that the Trump administration uses to combat voting by noncitizens, a move that critics argue could disenfranchise eligible voters. The justices granted the Justice Department's request to block a judge's order that had stopped state officials from using Social Security numbers and other information to conduct sweeping checks of the citizenship status of registered voters against federal records.
The Department of Homeland Security last year redesigned a federal database known as the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, used to verify a person's citizenship and immigration status. The revamp allowed users to search many records at a time and to conduct searches using individuals' Social Security numbers. Since then, several Republican-led states have compared their voter lists to the database, and some voters flagged as potential noncitizens have had their registrations canceled.
Critics say such election-related actions by Republicans are driven less by concerns over election security than by an attempt to gain political advantage by narrowing the electorate, risking the disenfranchisement of eligible, often Democratic-leaning voters. Advocacy groups that sued to block the revised SAVE system said that the new approach has resulted in people who were wrongfully identified as noncitizens being kicked off voter rolls. They have argued that SAVE can be outdated, meaning immigrants who have become naturalized U.S. citizens and are thus eligible to vote are sometimes labeled as noncitizens.
In a June ruling blocking the revamped database, U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan said the system was haphazardly assembled and contained unreliable citizenship data. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit declined to halt Sooknanan's ruling, prompting the administration's request to the Supreme Court. In a Supreme Court filing, Justice Department lawyers called the judge's order "indefensible," arguing that it "threatens the integrity" of the midterm elections.