Supreme Court restores Trump's mass voter verification system
The 6-3 order lets states use the revamped SAVE system, even as critics warn it could wrongly flag eligible voters and drive purges.
- On Friday, September 25, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an unsigned emergency order allowing states to use the Trump administration's revamped Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database to verify voter citizenship, lifting a lower-court ban.
- President Donald Trump ordered the database's expansion in March 2025 to include Social Security records for bulk voter checks; U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan blocked the modified system in June, citing privacy law violations.
- Critics argue the system is error-prone; Travis County, Texas, found that up to 21% of voters flagged as noncitizens were actually U.S. citizens. Advocacy groups contend the database relies on outdated information, risking wrongful disenfranchisement.
- Federal law bars systematic voter purges within 90 days of elections, limiting the ruling's immediate impact; state participation in SAVE remains voluntary, meaning adoption will vary across jurisdictions.
- Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, warning the order risks disenfranchising lawful voters without full judicial review. The underlying legal challenge continues in lower courts as the administration defends the database's necessity.
629 Articles
629 Articles
Right-wing media figures urge immediate purges of voter rolls following Supreme Court’s election database decision
After the Supreme Court ruling on the modified Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database, right-wing media figures and election denial activists are calling on states to purge their voter rolls — even though there is a moratorium on the systematic removal of voters from voter rolls 90-days prior to election day, and evidence the database could boot eligible voters from the voter rolls.
Supreme Court restores controversial SAVE voter-check system, sparking voting rights concerns.
On September 22nd, a Supreme Court majority declined to halt the Trump-Vance administration from reinstating a controversial citizenship-verification program that repeatedly misidentified eligible voters as non-citizens. The ruling, issued on the Court’s shadow docket, lifts a lower-court order that blocked the Department of Homeland Security from using its SAVE database to flag voters for removal. SAVE checks state-submitted information—such as…
Supreme Court Approves States’ Use of DHS Database to Exclude Illegal Voters
The U.S. Supreme Court decided in favor of allowing states to use the Department of Homeland Security’s database to check registered voters’ citizenship. In a 6-3 per curiam decision (an opinion issued in the name of the Court and not an individual justice), the justices overturned an injunction from District Court Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan, […]
Missouri Independent
Missouri can keep using disputed federal database to review voter eligibility
Missouri can continue using a federal database to review voter eligibility after the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily cleared the way for states to use an expanded version of the system to check the citizenship status of registered voters. The court’s 6-3 emergency order on Friday stayed a federal judge’s ruling that had blocked the expanded […]
Supreme Court allows expanded citizenship checks
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 […]
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