Overview
- A U.S. district judge, Sparkle L. Sooknanan, issued an injunction Tuesday, June 23, 2026, barring the government from using the central system to check state voter rolls.
- The ruling says the administration expanded the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements by linking Social Security data and other records in ways that violated privacy protections.
- The judge found the rollout was error‑prone, noting that some states already used the system and that lawful voters, including naturalized citizens, had been wrongly labeled non‑citizens and removed from rolls.
- The lawsuit was brought by voting‑rights and privacy groups who argued the aggregated, incomplete, or outdated data would spur wrongful disenfranchisements.
- The decision is a major legal setback for the administration’s push to expand federal oversight of voter eligibility, the Department of Homeland Security has criticized the ruling and said it will contest the order, and the next steps to watch are appeals and whether states stop using the tool before the November midterms.