Federal judge rules Trump administration’s SAVE database unlawful, citing privacy risks and potential voter purges
https://eciks.org/10343-76426-judge-blocks-citizenship-database-voter-rolls
Publish Date: 2026-06-22 17:37:00
Source Domain: eciks.org
A federal judge on Monday blocked the Trump administration from using a revamped citizenship database to check voter rolls, ruling that the government violated federal privacy laws when it created the centralized system containing Americans’ Social Security numbers and citizenship data.
U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan in Washington, D.C., sided with voting rights advocates including the League of Women Voters, finding that the Department of Homeland Security violated the Social Security Act, the Privacy Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act in overhauling the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system.
“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,” Sooknanan wrote in her 75-page decision. “This Court cannot stand idly by while that happens.”
The SAVE system, originally designed to verify immigration status for federal benefits, had been in use since 1986. But after President Trump signed an executive order in March 2026 directing citizenship verification for voter registration, the Trump administration dramatically expanded the database to include records from roughly 26.5 million people and made it searchable using partial Social Security numbers.
Sooknanan said the administration “haphazardly” combined Americans’ sensitive records from multiple federal agencies, including data the government itself knew to be unreliable. Internal DHS memos warned that naturalized citizens would be at particular risk of having their registrations erroneously cancelled, according to the ruling.
The expanded SAVE program has been used to check the citizenship status of more than 67 million registered voters, mostly from Republican-led states. The program flagged thousands of voters as potential noncitizens, but subsequent investigations showed many were actually citizens eligible to vote. Sooknanan highlighted this risk in…
