The Supreme Court on Friday set aside a lower-court block, allowing the Trump administration to use expanded federal data searches to flag registered voters who may not be citizens. States need not run the checks, and the reports are not final proof of citizenship.
The checks expand the SAVE system, created by Congress about 40 years ago to verify eligibility for federal benefits, and use Social Security records and other files. The administration says Homeland Security can handle more than 1 million requests a day. Texas said its checks flagged 2,724 of its 18 million registered voters as potential noncitizens; it acknowledged some results were inaccurate, and county officials had to verify them.
Voting rights advocates argued the data may not reflect naturalization after someone applied for a Social Security number. Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissented; Jackson warned some recently naturalized citizens could face canceled registrations or demands for proof. The decision may have limited immediate effect because states cannot purge voter rolls in the 90 days before an election.
