Supreme Court lifts ban on use of SAVE database for voter citizenship checks

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday overturned a district-court injunction that had barred the Trump administration from using the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database to check voter citizenship. The Court said the 1996 National Voter Registration Act permits the Department of Homeland Security to obtain citizenship and immigration data from federal agencies and to respond to state requests for that information.

The decision reverses a June ruling by U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Soonnan, who had found the expanded use of SAVE to violate privacy rights. The Court’s conservative majority emphasized that the law limits broad voter-roll purges in the weeks before an election, aiming to reduce any potential impact on the upcoming midterms.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in a dissent, warned that the ruling could lead to the disenfranchisement of lawful voters, writing that "the harm caused by burdening or disenfranchising even a few lawful voters outweighs the non-existent harm" to the government.

SAVE, originally created in 1986 to verify citizenship for public-benefit applications, was expanded last year to allow bulk searches using Social Security data. The program is currently used by 27 states. Critics cite instances where the system flagged U.S. citizens as non-citizens; for example, officials in Travis County, Texas, reported that about 10% of individuals identified as non-citizens were actually citizens.

The League of Women Voters, the lead plaintiff, said the database puts "millions of Americans at risk of being unlawfully targeted" and pledged to continue legal efforts to protect voting and privacy rights.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who supports the program, said his office applies "guardrails" and conducts interviews to verify data before taking any action against voters.

Lawyers for the administration argue that SAVE is lawful and necessary to prevent non-citizens from voting, while opponents stress the risk of erroneous removals from voter rolls.