The Supreme Court cleared the Trump administration to restart an expanded federal tool that uses Social Security records to verify voter citizenship and remove illegal immigrants from the rolls, a practical win for election integrity that liberal justices and activist groups immediately opposed.
In an unsigned order Friday, the high court paused a lower-court block and allowed the Department of Homeland Security to resume its expanded Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program, known as SAVE. The system now lets states check Social Security records in bulk to confirm whether registered voters are U.S. citizens.
Daily Caller reporting described the ruling as clearing the way for DHS to help states remove illegal immigrants and other non-citizens from voter rolls after the administration widened the program in 2025. At least 67 million registrations have already been scanned.
The majority held that the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 lets DHS gather citizenship and immigration data from other federal agencies. Federal law already requires the government to answer state and local requests to verify voter citizenship.
“Under section 1373(c), the Federal Government 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 majority wrote.
"Under section 1373(c), the Federal Government 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,"
U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan, a Biden appointee, had blocked the expanded tool in June. She argued it could wrongly remove citizens and violate privacy rights. The Supreme Court’s six conservative justices reversed that order in a 6-3 decision in Department of Homeland Security v. League of Women Voters.
National Review noted the conservative majority rejected what it called a strained reading of federal law meant to restrain the administration’s noncitizen-voting measures. The case sat on the emergency docket as midterms approached.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. Jackson wrote that the risk to lawful voters outweighed any government interest in the program.
“The harm caused by burdening or disenfranchising even a few lawful voters outweighs the nonexistent harm that the Government experiences when it is prevented from taking an action that it likely lacks the authority to take,” Jackson wrote.
"The harm caused by burdening or disenfranchising even a few lawful voters outweighs the nonexistent harm that the Government experiences when it is prevented from taking an action that it likely lacks the authority to take,"
The League of Women Voters called the outcome “profoundly disappointing” and claimed it put millions of Americans at risk of being targeted by an “unreliable” purge database weeks before the midterms.
Breitbart reported the 6-3 ideological split and noted the decision stems from a March 2025 executive order on sharing citizenship data with states. Lower courts had blocked the database until the high court stepped in.
SAVE was originally built so DHS could help federal, state, and local agencies keep government benefits from going to non-citizens. The Trump administration expanded it in 2025 so election officials could better ensure only citizens vote. The upgrade added Social Security records and bulk-search capability beyond one-name-at-a-time checks.
The New York Post reported that at least 25 states have used SAVE to check voter rolls since April 2025, scanning those 67 million registrations. The high court’s order allows individualized eligibility inquiries with Social Security numbers, citizenship status, and other federal data.
Just the News described the action as an interim stay rather than a final ruling on the merits. It is expected to help states run individual checks before the midterms and broader roll maintenance afterward. Federal law already requires the government to answer those citizenship requests.
States’ use remains voluntary. Existing National Voter Registration Act rules still bar most systematic purges within 90 days of an election, which limits any immediate mass cleanup this cycle.
That 90-day limit is why the Associated Press said the ruling will likely not reshape the midterms in a major way. Most states simply cannot scrub large numbers of names this close to Election Day.
AP News also flagged documented false positives. In Travis County, Texas, at least 10 to 21 percent of voters SAVE flagged as non-citizens turned out to be U.S. citizens. Critics seized on those numbers; supporters answered that citizenship checks still belong in any honest system and that errors can be corrected.
The same court that just handed the White House this election-integrity tool has also delivered other recent institutional wins, including a 5-4 clearance for White House ballroom construction.
While the legal fight over SAVE moved through the courts, enforcement cases continued. On Sept. 18 the Justice Department announced charges against 16 people in seven states, Massachusetts, Texas, Idaho, Georgia, Wisconsin, New Jersey, and Michigan, for illegally voting, registering through false citizenship claims, and related fraud.
ICE arrested Mariana Alexandra Dewey on Sept. 1 for allegedly voting illegally in the 2024 presidential election. Those cases sit alongside the database fight as concrete examples of the problem the administration says SAVE is built to catch.
In August, Democratic New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s administration announced that 220 non-citizens had a history of illegally voting in the state, according to the New Jersey Globe. Separate reporting referenced a larger cleanup effort aimed at thousands of non-citizen registrations after what officials called a registration glitch.
Voters who want clean rolls do not need every case to be a national conspiracy. They need basic verification that the people on the list are citizens. The 1996 immigration law and section 1373(c) already point in that direction; the Supreme Court simply refused to let a single district judge freeze the tool the executive branch says works best.
Democrats who dislike the result have already floated structural answers. Some are eyeing a Supreme Court overhaul if the party retakes Washington, and Rep. Jim Clyburn has urged Congress to add four justices.
Election rules keep landing at the high court. California Gov. Gavin Newsom pledged fresh litigation after the justices allowed a Trump mail-ballot order to advance, and the administration has returned to the justices seeking to unblock a USPS mail-ballot rule.
The stay restores DHS authority to share citizenship data and lets willing states query SAVE for eligibility checks. It does not force any state to use the system. It does not erase the 90-day purge limit. And it is not a final judgment on every privacy or accuracy claim raised below.
It does reject the idea that the federal government must sit on its hands when states ask for citizenship verification. The majority treated that duty as real and the expanded SAVE program as a legitimate way to meet it. Three liberal justices saw disenfranchisement risk as the greater harm and would have left Judge Sooknanan’s injunction in place.
For taxpayers and lawful voters, the baseline question is simple: should election officials be able to check federal records to confirm citizenship, or should a single district judge be able to shut that channel down? The Supreme Court chose the former, at least for now.
Clean elections start with clean rolls. Citizenship is not a paperwork inconvenience; it is the first filter. The court just put that filter back in officials’ hands.