By SUZANNE DOWNING
Step. 25, 2026 – The US Supreme Court today handed the League of Women Voters a defeat and cleared the way for states to use an expanded federal system to check the citizenship status of registered voters and people applying to register ahead of the November election.
In a 6–3 emergency ruling, the justices stayed a lower-court order that had set aside the Trump administration’s overhaul of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program, known as SAVE. This is not the same as the Save America Act. The court’s decision allows the modified system to operate while the government’s appeal proceeds. It is not a final ruling on whether the overhaul is lawful.
The administration expanded SAVE in 2025 to let state and local agencies submit bulk searches and check records held by the Social Security Administration, including Social Security numbers and citizenship information. The changes gave election officials another way to investigate whether a person on a voter roll is a citizen.
The unsigned majority opinion said the government is likely to prevail in its appeal. It pointed to a 1996 federal law that addresses the sharing of citizenship and immigration-status information with the Department of Homeland Security. “By prohibiting interference with the disclosure of information regarding citizenship status to DHS—‘notwithstanding any other provision of Federal, State, or local law’—Congress necessarily authorized DHS to request and receive that information,” the court said.
The majority also said the federal government would suffer harm if it could not use the modified program to respond to state and local requests. Federal law restricts systematic voter-roll removals within 90 days of a federal election, the court noted, but permits individualized inquiries during that period. Friday’s order does not authorize states to disregard that 90-day restriction.
The League of Women Voters, its affiliates and the Electronic Privacy Information Center challenged the expansion, saying that it violated federal privacy laws and could wrongly flag eligible voters. The Supreme Court acknowledged evidence that Social Security records did not always accurately reflect one plaintiff’s naturalized citizenship, but concluded that the government had met the requirements for a stay.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
US District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan had set aside the SAVE changes on June 22, and a divided D.C. Circuit panel declined to pause her order. Friday’s stay reverses that immediate effect while the appeal continues.
