Supreme Court Lifts Block on Voter Citizenship Database

The Supreme Court on Friday temporarily lifted a lower-court block on the Department of Homeland Security’s expanded SAVE database, allowing the federal government to respond to state and local requests to check voter citizenship. The provisional stay permits the system’s use for those checks ahead of the midterm elections but does not resolve the underlying legal dispute or establish how many states will use it. The database, formally called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system, was originally designed to help determine eligibility for benefits and track people seeking U.S. citizenship. The Trump administration expanded it to assist election officials in reviewing voter records. The Supreme Court majority said federal law authorizes the information-sharing arrangement and concluded that the lower-court block hindered the federal government’s ability to assist election officials. Three justices, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, dissented. They disputed the majority’s interpretation of federal law and argued that privacy protections restrict sharing citizenship information with DHS.