Federal judge halts Trump administration’s database for privacy violations and voter purges
Federal judge halts Trump administration’s database for privacy violations and voter purges
https://eciks.org/10385-13313-trump-administration-database-blocked-privacy
Publish Date: 2026-06-22 23:38:00
Source Domain: eciks.org
A federal judge on Monday blocked the Trump administration’s revamped voter database over privacy violations, ruling that the system unlawfully consolidated Americans’ sensitive personal information including Social Security numbers and citizenship data. U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan found that the administration violated the Privacy Act, the Social Security Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act when it transformed a decades-old immigration verification tool into a searchable national citizenship database.
The overhauled SAVE system—Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements—was modified to include records of native-born citizens, access Social Security Administration data, and permit bulk searches by state and local election officials. Tens of millions of voters have already had their records run through the database, according to NPR reporting, with more than 60 million records processed as of April 2026.
“All in all, the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote,” Judge Sooknanan wrote in her 75-page ruling. “This Court cannot stand idly by while that happens.” She said the Trump administration “flunked compliance” with federal privacy laws by “haphazardly” combining and repurposing “the private information of millions of Americans, including citizenship data that they knew to be unreliable.”
The database expansion stemmed from an executive order Trump signed on March 31, 2026, directing federal agencies to create a system to verify citizenship for voter registration. The changes were made by the Department of Homeland Security, the Social Security Administration, and the Department of Government Efficiency, with the help of DOGE, according to NPR.
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