Federal Judge Halts Database for Removing Noncitizens from Voter Rolls

A federal judge, appointed by President Biden, has blocked a database that was intended to help eliminate noncitizens from voter registration lists.

This ruling comes after a civil lawsuit led by the League of Women Voters against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Social Security Administration (SSA), and the state of Texas. The judge’s opinion, which spans 75 pages, addresses the modifications made to the Systematic Alien Eligibility Verification System (SAVE). This system was established under an executive order from President Trump to verify the citizenship or immigration status of registered voters.

The judge, Sparkle L. Suknanan, based her decision on “two fundamental rights that protect Americans from government overreach: the right to privacy and the right to vote.”

Suknanan criticized the revised SAVE system for overstepping its bounds. The revised version permitted direct access to national records and allowed state users to conduct “bulk searches,” rather than individual verifications.

She emphasized that the database is shared among multiple federal agencies and contains sensitive personal information, which breaches protections designed by Congress to limit such centralized databases, referencing the Computer Verification and Privacy Protection Act of 1988.

The defense argued that more recent immigration laws could take precedence over the 1988 protections. They specifically mentioned the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, which mandated federal responses to state inquiries about citizenship status.

However, Suknanan dismissed this argument as “not a winner.”

This ruling arrives as Republicans and Democrats gear up for the midterm elections. Republican Senator Mike Lee from Utah is once again advocating for the SAVE America Act, aiming to require government-issued IDs for voting.

“The American people overwhelmingly support this… regardless of political party. We want to make it easier to vote and harder to cheat. That’s the purpose of the American Rescue Act that the House passed,” Lee stated recently.