SupCo greenlights national citizenship database ahead of midterms
Kelsey Reichmann
WASHINGTON (CN) — In an emergency order, the Supreme Court on Friday agreed to let the Trump administration resurrect a national citizenship database using Social Security information for voter verification during the midterm elections.
A lower court blocked the Department of Homeland Security from collecting individuals’ Social Security numbers, citizenship status and other private data in a searchable repository, finding it violated federal privacy laws prohibiting the nonconsensual disclosure of sensitive information.
The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to block the ruling, claiming it threatened the integrity of the November elections by interfering with the federal government’s role in responding to states’ citizenship verification requests.
In an apparent 6-3 ruling along ideological lines, the Supreme Court granted the request. The justices reasoned the government would be harmed by losing access to the database ahead of the midterm elections.
“The district court’s order thus inhibits the federal government’s efforts to assist state and local agencies in the proper administration of the midterm elections,” the court wrote in a per curiam opinion. “Under these circumstances, the equities weigh in favor of a stay.”
The majority said its ruling would have a limited impact because federal law prohibits voter roll purges within 90 days before an election.
“To be sure, that moratorium limits the potential impact of staying the district court’s order in this case,” the majority wrote. “Still, all agree that the order prevents the federal government from using the modified SAVE program to conduct individualized inquiries, which are permitted under federal law during this period.”
President Donald Trump instructed Homeland Security to modify the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system known as SAVE under an executive order he said would shore up election integrity.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service tool was created in 1986 to allow federal, state, local or tribal governments to search an individual’s immigration and nationality status to determine their eligibility for a public benefit, a license or grant, a government credential, or to assist in a background check.
Under the executive order, it was modified to include the records of natural-born citizens, to access Social Security records, including Social Security numbers, and to permit bulk searches of records by SAVE users.
In addition to the SAVE tool, the Trump administration created another “Interagency Data System” that consolidates other governmental data sources that may have information concerning immigrants into a centralized “data lake” at USCIS, which includes millions of Americans’ Social Security numbers, biometric data, tax information, employment and medical records, among others.
The Supreme Court determined the Trump administration would likely prevail on the merits of its claims based on a 1996 statute granting DHS access to request sensitive information.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Joe Biden appointee, led her liberal colleagues in dissent, chastising their peers for issuing a ruling about two statutory provisions the court has never before interpreted, without full briefing or oral argument.
“The court also focuses only on the harms the government will purportedly suffer absent a stay, disregarding the harms that the modified SAVE system has caused, and will likely continue to cause, to lawful voters,” Jackson wrote in an opinion joined by Justice Elena Kagan and Justice Sonia Sotomayor, both Barack Obama appointees. “The court thus misuses its equitable powers.”
While Jackson described the limited impact of the high court’s order as a “bright side,” she said her colleagues were still wrong to give in to the government’s request at the cost of voters’ rights.
“In my view, however, 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. “This imbalance, along with the government’s improbable merits arguments, should have compelled the court to deny the stay.”
The League of Women Voters — joined by chapters in Virginia and Louisiana as well as the Electronic Privacy Information Center — filed a lawsuit over the modifications in September 2025, comparing the database to the dossiers kept on citizens by the fictional Oceania in George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984.”
The groups urged the justices to reject DHS’ emergency application, claiming the government had “recklessly created an error-laden master citizenship database that endangers millions of Americans’ privacy and voting rights.”
The Trump administration argues the SAVE modifications do not disqualify voters because the tool only notifies states whether the federal government could confirm citizenship. Therefore, the administration says the challengers would need to file lawsuits against the states that choose to disqualify voters based on SAVE data to receive relief.
DHS said the SAVE system processes millions of citizenship-verification requests every week for a range of purposes from maintaining voter rolls to verifying federal benefit eligibility. The Trump administration argues the federal government, the states and the public faced irreparable harm by forcing DHS to use “an older, more cumbersome, and less reliable version of the system,” especially ahead of the November elections.