Supreme Court Allows DHS to Verify Voter Eligibility
The Supreme Court decided on Friday that the Trump administration has the authority to check Social Security numbers, citizenship status, and other related information to assess voter eligibility for the upcoming November 3 midterm elections. This ruling overturned a previous order from a lower court, marking a temporary win for the administration on a key issue.
In a per curiam opinion that lacked a formal author, the six conservative justices indicated that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is permitted to use the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system “to conduct individualized inquiries,” stressing the urgency due to the tight timeline for state and local officials to conduct any significant voter roll purges.
A June ruling by DC US District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan had prohibited DHS from utilizing SAVE, a 40-year-old system designed to prevent government benefits from being distributed to noncitizens. This system had been updated in alignment with President Trump’s March 2025 executive order aimed at ensuring that only American citizens participate in national elections.
DHS had expanded the system to include natural-born citizens and permitted broad searches using names, birthdates, and Social Security numbers as identifiers, rather than relying solely on special identification numbers issued by the agency.
Judge Sooknanan expressed concerns in her 75-page opinion, stating that “Congress put protections in place to prevent precisely this type of centralized data bank,” and criticized the administration for “haphazardly combining and repurposing the private information of millions of Americans,” which could lead to states removing U.S. citizens from voter rolls based on unreliable data.
The majority of the court disagreed with her stance, arguing that “[t]he Federal Government has an obligation to respond to requests from state and local election officials seeking to verify the citizenship of voters. [Sooknanan’s order] prevents the Federal Government from using the program it believes is best suited to the task.”
