A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has rejected the Trump administration’s request to lift a previous ruling barring use of a voter database designed to investigate and potentially purge U.S. citizens from voter rolls across the country.
However, the ruling is at odds with another ruling in a federal court in Florida that the Department of Homeland Security must grant four Republican-controlled states expanded access the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database, or SAVE, to ostensibly confirm the U.S. citizenship of registered voters.
Judge T. Kent Wetherell III
“The court understands that this puts defendants in a bind because they are subject to two contradictory orders — one from this court requiring them to include certain features in the SAVE system and one from Judge (Sparkle) Sooknanan prohibiting them from doing so,” District Judge T. Kent Wetherwell II in Pensacola wrote in his July 7 order in State of Florida v. Department of Homeland Security.
The lawsuit by the attorneys general of Florida, Indiana, Iowa and Ohio demands that DHS upgrade the database to enable states to conduct mass searches of federal data, including Social Security information, in order to screen voters.
The effort comes amid a widespread effort by President Donald Trump to erode voting rights heading into the 2026 election. Use of the database to remove legally registered voters stemmed from Trump’s March 2025 executive order “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections.”
Wetherall approved an agreement between the plaintiffs and DHS in November requiring the federal agency “to assist in improving and modernizing” the SAVE system for states’ use.
But Sooknanan, a district judge in the District of Columbia, issued an order June 22 blocking use of the database, which she described as an overreach by government and a violation of privacy and voting rights. She upheld that order in a July 8 decision.
The litigation challenging the SAVE system was filed in September 2025, while the lawsuit by the states was filed the following month.
Judge Sparkle Sooknanan
Wetherall blamed DHS and the states for creating a legal “conundrum” by failing to notify him of the other lawsuit and of Sooknanan’s previous order, but he also was adamant his decision will stand.
“One of the orders has to give, and not surprisingly, the court is not persuaded by defendants’ (and the amici’s) arguments that its order is the one that should give,” he wrote. “This court is not bound by Judge Sooknanan’s order, and with all due respect, the court disagrees with the conclusions in that order.”
Sooknanan’s July 8 decision rejected the administration’s request that she suspend her original order blocking use of the SAVE system as League of Women Voters v. Department of Homeland Security proceeds through the courts.
She found that expanding a database originally intended to monitor immigrant benefits into one allowing bulk searches of personal voter information was illegal.
DHS “manufactured” claims of harms it has suffered from her initial injunction and is “somewhat audaciously” attempting to use the Florida ruling to circumvent her order, Sooknanan wrote.
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit challenging the SAVE database include a coalition of League of Women Voters chapters, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, or EPIC, and five individuals.
“The court rightly rejected the government’s effort to keep its unlawfully bloated SAVE system alive through ‘gamesmanship’ and procedural maneuvering,” said EPIC Deputy Director John Davisson said. “The Trump-Vance administration’s ploy to repurpose Americans’ Social Security data and conduct error-ridden mass screenings of voters is exactly the kind of mission creep that federal privacy laws are designed to prevent.”
“The Trump-Vance administration’s ploy to repurpose Americans’ Social Security data and conduct error-ridden mass screenings of voters is exactly the kind of mission creep that federal privacy laws are designed to prevent.”
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit are represented by Democracy Forward, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, and Fair Elections Center.
Donald Sherman
“The Trump-Vance administration created this crisis by unlawfully expanding the SAVE system to include records about every American citizen, and then chose to deepen it by entering into a settlement agreement that directly conflicted with litigation already pending in federal court,” Democracy Forward President Skye Perryman said.
League of Women Voters now heads to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
“As the DC District Court vividly illustrated today, the government has not only ‘mischaracterized’ the court’s reasoning in seeking to block its decision, but the entire situation is entirely ‘self-inflicted,’ and its litigation tactics ‘make a mockery of separation of powers.’ CREW President Donald Sherman said.