Supreme Court allows Trump administration to use revamped voter screening tool

The Supreme Court ruled Friday that the Trump administration may proceed with its expanded system for verifying voter citizenship status, granting the executive branch a temporary reprieve in its effort to deploy new election rules ahead of the midterm elections. The decision permits the use of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, service in its newly modified form, a tool originally designed for immigration benefit eligibility that the administration repurposed last year to assess voter eligibility.

The high court's majority opinion stated that the federal government must answer inquiries from state and local election officials regarding the citizenship of registered voters. The justices concluded that the lower court's previous block prevented the federal government from using the program it believes is best suited for this task. This ruling effectively reverses a decision by U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle Sooknanan, who had found the administration acted unlawfully by haphazardly combining and repurposing Americans' data, including what she described as unreliable citizenship data.

The expansion of SAVE involved integrating Social Security Administration data and allowing for bulk searches, changes that voting rights and privacy advocates argued far exceeded the system's authorized scope. The League of Women Voters characterized the Supreme Court's move as profoundly disappointing, warning that it puts millions of Americans at risk of being unlawfully targeted by an unreliable voter purge database weeks before the midterms. The organization stated that the D.C. district court had ruled the expanded SAVE program violated multiple laws and pledged to ensure that lower court decision stands through further legal action.

Department of Homeland Security General Counsel James Percival defended the administration's position on X, noting that an emergency petition to the Supreme Court was necessary to allow the use of government data to help states stop noncitizens from illegally voting. The legal battle continues despite this partial victory, as the case is not considered over by civil rights groups who are preparing to defend the district court's ruling.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, dissented from the majority's decision. Jackson highlighted the potential for disenfranchisement, noting that most states are barred from systematic voter purges within 90 days of a federal election. She argued that it was difficult to see how the government was harmed pending completion of court proceedings below, given that SAVE's application to upcoming elections would already be limited. In her view, the harm caused by burdening or disenfranchising even a few lawful voters outweighs the nonexistent harm experienced by the government when prevented from taking an action it likely lacks authority to take.

This ruling follows a recent setback for the administration earlier this month, when the Supreme Court struck down a U.S. Postal Service rule restructuring mail-in voting. At that time, President Trump criticized the court on Truth Social, writing that the Supreme Court had let the country down.