Washington State
MODIFIED VOTER VERIFICATION DATABASE
2026 Election
Supreme Court clears way for Trump administration to use modified voter verification database
Sept. 25, 2026
The Supreme Court on Friday cleared the way for the Trump administration to move forward with its plan to use a modified centralized database to verify voters’ citizenship. In a seven-page opinion issued just 39 days before the Nov. 3, 2026, election, the justices paused a ruling by a federal judge in Washington, D.C., that had blocked the government from doing so on the ground that it violated (among other things) federal privacy laws.
The unsigned opinion for the majority indicated that the lower court’s order “inhibits the Federal Government’s efforts to assist state and local agencies in the proper administration of the midterm elections.”
In a dissenting opinion joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson called Friday’s decision a “questionable interim ruling[] about two statutory provisions” that the Supreme Court “has never before interpreted.” She also contended that the majority “focuses only on the harms the Government will purportedly suffer absent a stay, disregarding the harms that the” use of the modified database “has caused, and will likely continue to cause, to lawful voters.”
The dispute dates back to late March, when President Donald Trump issued an executive order that (among other things) directed the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to set up systems that would permit state and local governments to verify voters’ citizenship and immigration status. Those agencies then modified the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database, known as the SAVE system, to include the records of U.S.-born citizens, to give it access to Social Security numbers, and to allow users to conduct multiple searches simultaneously.
The League of Women Voters and the Electronic Privacy Information Center went to federal court in Washington, where they challenged the changes to the SAVE system. On June 22, U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan agreed with the challengers that the modified SAVE system violates federal privacy laws, the Social Security Act, and the federal laws governing administrative agencies, and she barred the government from using it.
Sooknanan wrote that “the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote.” Moreover, she continued, “states have partnered with the federal government to access the database and are actively removing United States citizens from voter rolls based on inaccurate information.”
On Sept. 4, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit turned down the government’s request to pause Sooknanan’s order while its appeal moves forward, but the court fast-tracked the appeal, directing the litigants to quickly propose a briefing schedule. The litigants subsequently agreed to postpone any briefing in that court until the Supreme Court acts on the Trump administration’s emergency appeal.
U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer went to the Supreme Court on Sept. 8, asking the justices to freeze Sooknanan’s ruling while the litigation continues. Sooknanan’s decision, he wrote, was an “indefensible order that threatens the integrity of upcoming elections by vacating the federal government’s authority to internally use Social Security data when fulfilling its duty to respond to requests by States to verify the citizenship of individuals for voting and other purposes.” Moreover, he argued, Sooknanan did not have the power to enter her order because the challengers do not have a legal right to sue, known as standing.
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