September 25, 2026 · Constitutional Order & Rule of Law
· Court ruling
Confirmed
Supreme Court Revives Trump's SAVE Database for Voter Citizenship Checks
The Supreme Court on September 25, 2026 sided 6-3 with the administration, pausing an order that had blocked DHS's overhauled SAVE database from checking state voter rolls for citizenship. SAVE, built to verify benefits eligibility, was linked to Social Security records and allows bulk queries; states had run tens of millions of voter records through it before a judge halted the tool in June, finding its data-sharing violated the Social Security Act, the Privacy Act, and administrative law. Justice Jackson's dissent warned the ruling ignored the risk of citizens being wrongly purged from rolls.
The decision revives a system that has already misidentified some eligible citizens as noncitizens — in Texas, roughly a fifth of flagged voters were later confirmed as citizens. It also clears a path for a separate, court-challenged project to compile state-by-state lists of adult U.S. citizens ahead of the midterms, raising due-process concerns and questions over undisclosed error rates.
The underlying privacy suit continues in district court, and a related Maryland case over the citizenship-list project remains active, with a judge requiring 30 days' notice before any rollout. Federal law bars systematic voter-roll purges within 90 days of the election, limiting the ruling's effect this cycle.
The decision revives a system that has already misidentified some eligible citizens as noncitizens — in Texas, roughly a fifth of flagged voters were later confirmed as citizens. It also clears a path for a separate, court-challenged project to compile state-by-state lists of adult U.S. citizens ahead of the midterms, raising due-process concerns and questions over undisclosed error rates.
The underlying privacy suit continues in district court, and a related Maryland case over the citizenship-list project remains active, with a judge requiring 30 days' notice before any rollout. Federal law bars systematic voter-roll purges within 90 days of the election, limiting the ruling's effect this cycle.
Legal outcome: Supreme Court granted the administration's stay application 6-3, pausing the district court's injunction against the modified SAVE database pending further proceedings.