Federal judge halts Trump administration’s Social Security database used to purge voters from rolls

Source Domain: eciks.org

U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan blocked the Trump administration’s citizenship database on Monday, ruling that the overhauled system violated federal privacy law and has already led states to wrongly purge eligible voters from their rolls.

The judge said the administration “knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote” when it consolidated Social Security numbers and citizenship data into a centralized database without congressional approval, according to her 75-page ruling.

The blocked system, called SAVE (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements), was originally designed to verify immigration status for federal benefits. The Trump administration overhauled it in 2025 to include natural-born citizens and permit bulk searches by states seeking to identify noncitizens on voter rolls.

States including Texas and Louisiana have already run voter registration lists through the modified database. Sooknanan found that some plaintiffs’ members were wrongfully identified as noncitizens and had their registrations canceled as a result.

The League of Women Voters, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and five individuals sued the Department of Homeland Security, Social Security Administration, and Department of Justice in September 2025, arguing the consolidation violated the Social Security Act, the Privacy Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act. Justice Department lawyers argued only a small number of naturalized voters might have inaccurate citizenship data in Social Security records, but Sooknanan called that claim a “red herring.”

She found the administration “flunked compliance” with all three laws by “haphazardly” combining citizenship data the agencies “knew to be unreliable.” The judge also ruled that falsely labeling someone a noncitizen amounts to defamation, particularly because it implies a federal crime.

The ruling immediately halts the…

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