The U.S. Supreme Court has lifted restrictions on the Trump administration’s expanded federal voter citizenship database, allowing it to be used while a legal challenge continues.
The Trump administration last year significantly expanded the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, program, created after Congress passed legislation in 1986. Trump, by executive order, directed the Department of Homeland Security and Social Security Administration to integrate records so state and local authorities could use SAVE to check the citizenship of registered voters.
The Supreme Court’s decision puts on hold U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan’s June order that blocked the administration’s revamped version of SAVE. Noting that a 1996 law allows the Department of Homeland Security to obtain citizenship and immigration information from other federal agencies, the Supreme Court majority said the government has “an obligation to respond” to states seeking to verify citizenship.
“The order below prevents the Federal Government from using the program it believes is best suited to the task,” the majority wrote in the unsigned opinion.
Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.
“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.
Federal law generally prohibits states from systematically removing voters from their rolls within 90 days of a federal election, which the Supreme Court said limits the potential impact of its decision on the midterm elections. Individual voter inquiries, however, are permitted during that period. States also are not required to use SAVE.
Sylvester Brown Jr. is the Deaconess Foundation Community Advocacy Fellow.