Overview
- The Supreme Court issued an emergency order on Sept. 25 that temporarily lifted a June injunction by Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan, allowing the Department of Homeland Security to again make the modified Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, available to states for voter‑citizenship checks.
- The Trump administration expanded SAVE to pull Social Security Administration records, permit searches by Social Security number, and run bulk or multiple‑record queries so state officials can check many registrations at once.
- Voting‑rights and privacy groups have produced concrete examples of errors: a Travis County review found roughly 10–25% of examined SAVE noncitizen matches were actually U.S. citizens, and reporting from St. Louis County showed extremely high error rates in sampled responses.
- The immediate practical effect is limited because states join SAVE voluntarily and the National Voter Registration Act bars broad purges within 90 days of a federal election, though individualized checks and follow‑up burdens on flagged voters remain allowed.
- The case will proceed in lower courts to decide whether a 1996 immigration statute displaces privacy laws like the Social Security Act and the Privacy Act; the order drew a three‑justice dissent and leaves open questions about standing, uneven state access, and the real‑world risk of wrongful removals for newly naturalized citizens.