US Supreme Court allows Trump to use DHS database for voter citizenship checks

The US Supreme Court's conservative majority on Friday lifted a lower court injunction that had blocked the Trump administration from using an expanded Department of Homeland Security database to verify voter citizenship. The Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, originally created in 1986 for benefit eligibility, was expanded last year to allow bulk searches of Social Security records.

A federal district judge ruled in June that the revamped system violated privacy rights and risked wrongly removing eligible citizens from voter rolls. The judge noted DHS admitted the data contains errors, including flagging naturalized citizens as noncitizens. A federal appeals court upheld that block before the Supreme Court intervened.

“The harm caused by burdening or disenfranchising even a few lawful voters outweighs the non-existent harm that the government experiences when it is prevented from taking an action that it likely lacks the authority to take.”

The high court ruled the National Voter Registration Act prohibits systematic purges within 90 days of a federal election, limiting any immediate effect on the November midterms. States may still check individual voter citizenship. The three liberal justices dissented, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warning the decision burdens lawful voters.

Voting rights groups say the ruling opens the door for future mass purges using unreliable data. The Center for Democracy & Technology called it a serious blow to voter privacy, while Verified Voting urged states to exercise extreme caution with the database.