Overview
- The Supreme Court lifted a lower-court injunction on Friday, Sept. 25, and allowed the Trump administration to make the revamped SAVE system available to states while the lawsuit continues.
- The administration reworked the Department of Homeland Security’s SAVE tool to add Social Security Administration records, enable searches by Social Security number, and allow bulk queries of voter lists.
- A June district-court ruling by Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan had barred the expanded SAVE program after finding it violated privacy rules and relied on error-prone data that led some jurisdictions to flag or remove voters.
- The ruling’s short-term effect is limited because states use SAVE voluntarily and the National Voter Registration Act generally bars systematic purges within 90 days of a federal election.
- Litigation will decide whether a 1996 immigration statute authorizes the data sharing and whether privacy and Social Security laws were breached, and voters who are wrongly flagged could face burdens to prove their citizenship.