Supreme Court Clears Path For States To Check Voter Citizenship Ahead Of Midterms
The Supreme Court on Friday cleared the way for states to use a federal immigration database to check voter rolls ahead of November’s midterm elections, handing the Trump administration a legal victory.
In an unsigned emergency order, the high court put on hold a lower-court ruling that blocked the Department of Homeland Security from offering its Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program to state election officials. The court’s three liberal justices publicly dissented.
The decision permits states to voluntarily check registered voters against federal records. However, because federal law prohibits systematic voter purges within 90 days of an election, the immediate impact on the upcoming midterms is expected to be limited.
The order pauses a June ruling by U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan, who blocked the revamped tool after finding it violated privacy rights and risked wrongly removing legitimate voters. An appeals court had upheld her decision.
The Supreme Court majority determined that a 1996 law permits DHS to obtain citizenship records and requires the agency to respond to state requests.
Judge’s Gavel (Unsplash)
“The order below prevents the Federal Government from using the program it believes is best suited to the task,” the majority wrote.
In her dissent, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that the system risks disenfranchising legal voters and likely exceeds federal authority.
“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,” Jackson wrote.
Originally designed to prevent noncitizens from receiving government benefits, the SAVE program was recently expanded to check voter rolls, scanning at least 67 million registrations. Critics have pointed to accuracy issues, noting an investigation in Travis County, Texas, where officials found that 10% to 21% of 97 voters flagged by SAVE were actually U.S. citizens.
Noncitizen voting is already a federal crime punishable by prison and deportation, and research shows it remains exceptionally rare. The ruling comes after the court rejected an earlier administration bid in mid-September to restrict mail-in voting rules.