The Trump administration can use a controversial database to initiate state voter roll purges in the run-up to the midterm elections, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Sept. 25.
The 6-3 emergency stay follows a recent federal appeals court decision that upheld a lower court ruling preventing the administration’s use of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, system, as directed in a 2025 presidential order.
District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan in Washington, D.C., ruled in June that granting the Department of Homeland Security access to Americans’ Social Security and other personal data would constitute government overreach and violate citizens’ privacy rights.
While a divided U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld Sooknanan’s order Sept. 4, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority concluded that barring the administration from using the database would hinder its ability to oversee state-run elections. Historically, states have run elections, not the federal government.
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority concluded that barring the administration from using the database would hinder its ability to oversee state-run elections.
The matter fell to the justices when the Trump administration appealed the 2-1 appellate court ruling.
“The district court’s order thus inhibits the federal government’s efforts to assist state and local agencies in the proper administration of the midterm elections,” according to the unsigned majority opinion.
The decision stemmed from League of Women Voters vs. DHS, which claimed the use of the immigration database to monitor and purge voter rolls would violate the Social Security and Privacy acts in addition to statutes governing the operation of federal agencies.
The stay issued by the justices, while temporary, added that plaintiffs in the 2025 lawsuit were unlikely to succeed on the merits if appealed to the full appeals court and ultimately to the Supreme Court.
Congress “separately and expressly authorized DHS to request and receive information relating to citizenship and immigration status from other agencies, including SSA, in the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act,” the conservative majority wrote.
The government also “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 decision defended overturning Sooknanan’s injunction despite the fact another federal law bars the government from conducting mass purges of voter rolls within three months of an election.
“To be sure, that moratorium limits the potential impact of staying the district court’s order in this case. Still, all agree that the order prevents the federal government from using the modified SAVE program to conduct individualized inquiries, which are permitted under federal law during this period.”
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson criticized the majority for issuing a ruling without full briefing or oral arguments, and for erring on the side of government over citizens.
“The court also focuses only on the harms the government will purportedly suffer absent a stay, disregarding the harms that the modified SAVE system has caused, and will likely continue to cause, to lawful voters. The court thus misuses its equitable powers,” Jackson wrote in a minority opinion joined by justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.
U.S. elections have traditionally been administered on the state level. But President Donald Trump has made no secret of his intention to undermine the Nov. 3 midterm elections. While offering no proof, Trump and his election-denying allies have claimed massive voter fraud necessitates a federal takeover of elections and voting rights.
The administration’s latest win isn’t the first time it has appealed to the Supreme Court to leap-frog the traditional appeals process in legal challenges to its policies. The justices cleared the way on Aug. 24 for DHS to open files on American voters and to create lists of local and state elections officials to investigate for allegedly issuing ballots to noncitizens.