The Supreme Court on Friday stayed a lower-court order that had shut down the Trump administration’s expanded version of the DHS SAVE database. So, yes: the federal government may again offer states a tool that combines immigration and Social Security data to check voter citizenship while the appeal rolls along. Nothing says “quiet confidence in local election administration” quite like firing up another national data contraption before a midterm.
The unsigned Court order said a 1996 immigration statute likely permits the information-sharing setup and said the lower-court ruling hindered federal help to state and local election officials. The stay is temporary, pending the D.C. Circuit appeal and any Supreme Court review on the merits. The Court also noted that federal law generally bars systematic voter-roll removals within 90 days of a federal election, though individualized inquiries may continue. Read the order.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Her dissent said the updated system connects sensitive Social Security master-file data to SAVE and risks burdening or disenfranchising lawful voters, particularly recently naturalized citizens whose federal records may be stale. That is not some guy yelling into a CB radio behind a roast-beef joint; it is the Court’s written dissent describing the actual risk.
The underlying district-court ruling had found that the revised program violated federal privacy protections and could lead to eligible citizens being wrongly flagged or removed from voter rolls. Associated Press reporting found that the tool has flagged some eligible voters, including U.S. citizens in Texas, while state use remains voluntary. AP’s reporting on the lower-court ruling and AP’s reporting on Friday’s stay spell out the practical stakes: the database is back for now, but it is not a magic citizenship oracle, no matter how many empty Michelob bottles get arranged around the server rack.
Sources
- https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/26a308_pok0.pdf
- https://apnews.com/article/trump-elections-noncitizens-voting-save-lawsuit-a9612cfffa40c938e67b99f265c9e817
- https://www.the-journal.com/articles/associated-press/supreme-court-lets-trump-administration-use-revamped-federal-voter-eligibility-database-for-now/
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Featured image: US Supreme Court.JPG by Photo by Mr. Kjetil Ree ., CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
