A federal judge on Monday blocked the Trump administration from implementing a voter verification system that would combine Social Security information with citizenship records, ruling that the effort unlawfully exposed sensitive personal data and led to eligible voters being wrongly flagged as noncitizens.
U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan, who is based in Washington, D.C., halted the administration’s modified Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, database, concluding that federal officials violated privacy protections and enabled states to improperly remove voters from registration rolls.
“The federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote,” Sooknanan, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, wrote in a 75-page opinion. “This Court cannot stand idly by while that happens.”
The lawsuit was brought by the League of Women Voters and other advocacy groups challenging the administration’s modifications to the Department of Homeland Security’s SAVE system.
According to the ruling, the Trump administration expanded the database by combining citizenship information maintained by DHS with records held by the Social Security Administration, creating a centralized verification tool that plaintiffs argued Congress never authorized.
Sooknanan said the government shared the modified database with states despite outstanding concerns about inaccuracies within the system. She further found that the administration likely violated both the Social Security Act and the Privacy Act by allowing states access to sensitive personal information.
“States have run their voter rolls through the modified SAVE system, and some of the Plaintiffs’ members have been wrongfully identified as non-citizens by SAVE, resulting in the cancellation of their voter registrations,” the judge wrote.
The government has disputed these so-called “inaccuracies” flagged by the judge, arguing that “a former non-citizen being described as a current non-citizen—even if mistakenly and inaccurately, after naturalization—does not come close to” defamation. Notably, the judge injected partisan framing into the ruling, describing the administration’s arguments in court as ones that “border on the absurd.”
The ruling immediately stops implementation of the revised system and marks another legal setback for President Donald Trump as his administration pursues a broader election-integrity agenda.
The decision could also complicate a separate administration effort to use federal homeland security funding to encourage states to adopt election-related reforms, as DHS is reportedly considering new grant conditions that would require states to run voter rolls through the SAVE database and implement additional election-administration changes or risk losing up to 20% of certain homeland security grants, according to a CNN report published Monday.
Sooknanan’s ruling indirectly affects that reported plan, after she found that the revised SAVE system likely violates federal privacy protections and has already generated inaccurate citizenship determinations. If the administration moves forward with the reported grant conditions, it could face additional legal hurdles as the SAVE system is now subject to a federal court order.
When asked about the reported proposal, a DHS spokesperson did not confirm the grant conditions but indicated election security remains a priority for the administration.
“Under President Trump and Secretary Mullin, DHS and FEMA are committed to ensuring homeland security grant funding advances core national security priorities, to include the security and integrity of our nation’s election infrastructure,” the spokesperson told the Washington Examiner. “Any recipient of federal funding should expect accountability for how taxpayer dollars are spent.”
The spokesperson also said that “no changes to grant requirements or funding distributions are official until they are formally announced and published through proper, authorized agency channels.”
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The Justice Department declined to comment when asked about the reported DHS plans to consider state funding in connection with compliance with the SAVE system.
The administration is likely to appeal Sooknanan’s decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.