US supreme court lifts restrictions on controversial voter database

The US supreme court has lifted restrictions on a controversial federal database of voters as Donald Trump seeks to impose tougher restrictions on voting ahead of November’s midterm elections.The ruling issued Friday by the chief justice, John Roberts, in the name of the court temporarily sets aside an injunction issued by US district judge Sparkle L Sooknanan, who ruled on 22 June against the Trump administration’s plan to use the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements – Save – database to vet voter registration eligibility. A federal appeals court later declined to pause that ruling.The ruling sends the case back to the DC circuit court of appeals to be heard.“Today’s decision is profoundly disappointing, as it puts millions of Americans at risk of being unlawfully targeted by the administration’s unreliable voter purge database weeks before the midterm elections,” the League of Women Voters said in a prepared statement. “However, this case is not over. The D.C. district court ruled that the expanded SAVE program violated multiple laws. We will be doing everything in our power to protect Americans’ voting and privacy rights by ensuring that the district court decision stands.”The case stems from an executive order issued in March 2025 with the stated purpose of improving enforcement of laws barring noncitizens from voting in US elections. Among its provisions, the order directed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other agencies to make federal databases of citizenship information available to state elections directors.Other provisions of that executive order, like its demand to states to turn over their voter rolls to the federal goverment, remain bottled up in court.The League of Women Voters, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and other groups sued to block the use of the Save database, arguing that it was riddled with inaccuracies, and that taking social security numbers from the Social Security Administration violation of the Privacy Act, Social Security Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act.State officials had used ​social security numbers and other information obtained by DHS to conduct sweeping checks of the citizenship status of registered voters against federal records.Federal law prevents state election administrators from systematically striking people from the voter rolls within 90 days of an election, with or without the use of the Save database.However, the Friday ruling notes that “all agree that the order prevents the Federal Government from using the modified SAVE program to conduct individualized inquiries, which are permitted under federal law during this period.”That distinction matters in light of a DHS whistleblower’s allegations that the department has as part of its “Unlawful Voter Initiative” directed federal agents to impersonate voters in violation of state laws, using social security numbers and other information to look up voter history on state websites.US senators Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, both California Democrats, sent a letter Monday to the state’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, asking for an investigation.“As you know, the U.S. Department of Justice has been unsuccessful in its attempt to compel California to provide its voter information to the Trump Administration, raising serious questions about what this data is, how DHS obtained it, and whether they complied with the law in collecting and using this data,” the letter said. “The fact that the DHS data was compiled with something called ‘supplemental magic’ does not provide reassurance.”