The Supreme Court on Friday allowed the Department of Homeland Security to use an expanded federal citizenship-verification system that incorporates Social Security records as states review voter registrations for noncitizens.

By yourNEWS Media Newsroom.

The Supreme Court on Friday cleared the Trump administration to resume using an expanded federal database to help states verify the citizenship of registered voters, overturning a lower-court restriction on the Department of Homeland Security’s use of the system.

The ruling permits DHS to use the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program, known as SAVE, in conjunction with Social Security records when responding to requests from election officials seeking to determine whether registered voters are U.S. citizens.

The decision is not expected to substantially reshape the November midterm elections because most states are barred from removing voters from registration rolls within 90 days of an election, according to The Associated Press.

SAVE was originally created to allow DHS to assist federal, state and local agencies in determining whether noncitizens were eligible for government benefits.

The Trump administration expanded the program’s capabilities in 2025 so government agencies could also use it to help verify citizenship in connection with voter registration records. At least 67 million registrations have since been scanned through the expanded system.

That use of SAVE was halted in June by U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan, a Biden appointee, who concluded that the expanded program could mistakenly remove eligible U.S. citizens from voter rolls and raised concerns about violations of privacy rights.

The Supreme Court disagreed with the lower court’s restriction.

The majority pointed to the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, concluding that the law requires the federal government to provide citizenship and immigration information when state and local governments request verification.

“Under section 1373(c), the Federal Government has an obligation to respond to requests from state and local election officials seeking to verify the citizenship of voters. The order below prevents the Federal Government from using the program it believes is best suited to the task,” the majority wrote.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

Jackson argued that the risk of improperly affecting lawful voters outweighed the government’s interest in immediately using the expanded program.

“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.

The ruling arrives amid broader federal scrutiny of allegations involving noncitizen voting and false claims of U.S. citizenship on voter registration forms.

The Department of Justice announced Sept. 18 that prosecutors had charged 16 people in seven states with offenses including illegal voting, registering to vote after falsely claiming U.S. citizenship and related fraud.

The cases were filed in Massachusetts, Texas, Idaho, Georgia, Wisconsin, New Jersey and Michigan.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement separately arrested Mariana Alexandra Dewey on Sept. 1. Authorities identified Dewey as an illegal alien and accused her of illegally voting in the 2024 presidential election.

State officials have also reported finding noncitizens in voter registration systems.

Democratic New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s administration announced in August that 220 noncitizens had a history of voting illegally in the state, according to The New Jersey Globe.

Friday’s Supreme Court order allows DHS to move forward with the expanded SAVE system while the underlying legal dispute continues, restoring the federal government’s ability to use Social Security information as part of citizenship-verification requests from state and local election officials.

Original article