Judge blocks Trump admin database of SSNs and citizenship status

The judge sided with advocacy groups, including Democracy Forward and the ACLU, who argued that the upgrades to the program aggregated sensitive personal data in a way that could result in voters being wrongly purged from voter rolls. Sooknanan stated that the federal government had knowingly violated privacy rights and that Congress had expressly prohibited the centralization of Americans' personal identifying information.

The ruling is a significant legal setback for President Donald Trump's efforts to use federal agencies to identify and remove noncitizens from state voter rolls. The modified SAVE system, which critics referred to as an unlawful centralized federal database of voter information, was a key component of an executive order signed earlier this year.

The court found that relying on inaccurate information to falsely label individuals as non-citizens constitutes defamation, and described the administration's attempt to downplay the consequences of such erroneous labels as bordering 'on the absurd.' The Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.