The Supreme Court majority granted the Trump administration emergency relief to use its modified citizenship database for election-related checks, lifting a lower-court block; three justices dissented, citing risks to eligible voters.
U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan issued the block on June 22 after the League of Women Voters and the Electronic Privacy Information Center challenged the overhaul. She found the government’s actions unlawful in several respects, including disclosure of Social Security numbers and related records.
DHS’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program checks citizenship and immigration status. Its 2025 overhaul added records of natural-born citizens, access to Social Security records and bulk searches. The challengers warned that errors could lead to eligible voters being misidentified as noncitizens. The majority said the block impeded federal assistance to election officials; Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said it discounted harms to lawful voters.
