The Supreme Court delivered a major victory to President Trump Friday, greenlighting his administration’s mass voter verification system while legal challenges continue.
The emergency order allows states to immediately tap into the Department of Homeland Security’s SAVE program — Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements — to cross-check voter rolls against federal citizenship records.
States’ participation remains voluntary, and existing federal law still bars systematic purges within 90 days of an election. That limits the tool’s immediate impact on upcoming midterms. But the ruling hands election officials a powerful new weapon in the fight to keep non-citizens off voter rolls.
“THE SUPREME COURT’S ORDER ALLOWS THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO SHARE INFORMATION IN ITS POSSESSION CONCERNING PEOPLE’S APPARENT CITIZENSHIP STATUS TO HELP ELECTION OFFICIALS REGISTER ELIGIBLE VOTERS WHILE PREVENTING THE IMPROPER ADDITION OF NON-CITIZENS TO THE REGISTRATION ROLLS.”
Michael Morley, director of the Election Law Center at Florida State University, called the decision a recognition that Congress expressly endorsed such information sharing in 1996 amendments to federal immigration law.
The order puts on hold a June ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan, who had blocked Trump’s revamped version of SAVE. Sooknanan claimed it violated Americans’ privacy rights and risked wrongly purging legitimate voters.
A federal appeals court declined to pause her ruling — prompting the administration’s emergency appeal to the nation’s highest court.
Trump moved to expand SAVE after signing an executive order directing creation of a federal voter registration list and imposing new restrictions on mail-in voting eligibility — all part of a broader push to combat voter fraud.
The SAVE program launched in 1986 under an immigration law mandating DHS help federal, state, and local agencies block government benefits from flowing to non-citizens. Trump’s team significantly expanded its search abilities last year.
Since then, at least 67 million registrations have been scanned through the program.
Critics worry the tool could end up purging valid voters. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson led the dissent, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.
Jackson wrote that “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.”
The majority pushed back hard. Federal officials are required to contact individuals flagged by SAVE to seek additional information if their citizenship can’t be confirmed, the justices noted. And SAVE has long allowed agencies to verify citizenship using records maintained by the Justice Department, Homeland Security, and State Department.
Jason Snead, executive director of the Honest Elections Project, said the Supreme Court “got it right.”
“The Trump Administration’s SAVE expansion just makes it easier for states to get federal citizenship data to help them clean up voter rolls,” Snead said. “Once again, left-wing interests are doing everything they can to block states from verifying citizenship on the eve of a federal election, and for the second time in a week they have lost in court. This a major win for election integrity.”
The Supreme Court’s stay is temporary. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit could still rule against the SAVE program — potentially sending the case back to the Supreme Court for a final showdown.
