Supreme Court Lets Administration Use Citizenship Database Before Midterms
The Supreme Court has cleared the way for the Trump administration to use a federal immigration database to check the citizenship of registered voters, less than two months before the midterm elections.
The 6-3 decision, split along ideological lines, concerns the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system, known as SAVE, a database that has existed for about 40 years and was originally built to check eligibility for government benefits.
Limits on how it can be used
The majority said the practical effect before November should be minimal. Federal election law bars systematic voter roll purges within 90 days of a federal election, and the ruling restricts the administration to individualized inquiries rather than bulk searches of voter rolls.
The dissent
Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissented. They argued that the majority misread federal immigration law and overrode privacy protections that limit how citizenship information can be shared. Jackson wrote that the harm of burdening or disenfranchising even a few lawful voters outweighs what she called the nonexistent harm the policy is meant to address.
Audits have repeatedly found that voting by noncitizens is extremely rare. Voting rights advocates worry that errors in the database could lead to eligible citizens being flagged, while supporters say the tool helps ensure that only citizens vote.
