Washington — On Tuesday, the Trump administration petitioned the Supreme Court to step in regarding a lawsuit that seeks to permit the implementation of a disputed data system for reviewing state voter registries as the midterm elections approach.
In a ruling issued in June, a federal judge determined that the Trump administration acted illegally when it established a centralized database referred to as “Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements,” or SAVE, which houses private information of American citizens. U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan noted that this database had been misused by certain states, leading to the erroneous removal of U.S. citizens from their voting lists.
This system was part of President Trump’s broader initiative to uncover supposed widespread instances of noncitizens participating in federal elections, a claim that has been largely discredited and shown to be exceedingly uncommon.
Judge Sooknanan remarked in her decision that the “federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote” by attempting to implement the SAVE system. She determined that the administration had violated three federal statutes in its pursuit of this initiative.
Recently, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the Trump administration’s request to pause the district court’s injunction against the SAVE database.
In a fresh filing on Tuesday, Solicitor General D. John Sauer labeled Sooknanan’s decision as “indefensible,” asserting that it jeopardizes the integrity of the upcoming elections. He contended that the judge exceeded her jurisdiction and that the voting rights organizations involved in the original lawsuit lacked the necessary legal standing to file such a case. Sauer urged the Supreme Court to overturn Sooknanan’s injunction and permit the use of the SAVE system.
“SAVE does not disqualify any voter; rather, it simply informs the states whether the federal government can verify citizenship,” Sauer explained. “Therefore, any voter harm results from the states’ actions, not from the federal government, and would not be rectified by the relief the court granted against the federal government.”
This latest appeal follows the Trump administration’s prior request to the Supreme Court to reinstate new Postal Service regulations concerning mail-in voting for the forthcoming midterms.
The SAVE database was established by various federal agencies in response to an executive order signed by President Trump last year, which aimed to impose a new proof-of-citizenship requirement for voter registration. This order instructed the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to develop a database that would enable state and local authorities to verify the citizenship or immigration status of individuals seeking to register to vote.
Despite facing multiple legal challenges, key elements of this executive order have been blocked. Nonetheless, it spurred a significant revision of the existing SAVE system, which was updated to include records of natural-born citizens, to allow access to Social Security Administration records, including Social Security numbers, and to facilitate bulk searches of records by authorized entities utilizing the database.
