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    "original_url": "https:\/\/www.democracydocket.com\/news-alerts\/supreme-court-revives-dhs-use-of-flawed-immigration-database-for-voter-purges\/?utm_campaign=14390844-News&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=440996715&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8jkyTLFBZYaJ3c5JWApq1do0I-1WtPEOKjpZnGqm91YT7Te09dQbuTn-NyPnyBn9ul2efUF4pVLVQTuI6n3SnHlyLMiA",
    "parsed_content": "News\nElection Administration\nLitigation\nVoting\nSupreme Court revives DHS use of flawed immigration database for voter purges\nBy Jacob Knutson\nSeptember 25, 2026\nPolice in front of the U.S. Supreme Court building in June 2026 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla\/Getty Images)\nIn a dangerous decision for voters, the Supreme Court authorized the Trump administration to overhaul a federal immigration database into a vast, centralized and deeply flawed database of Americans\u2019 personal information to initiate registration purges.\nThe decision lets the administration move forward with a key provision of President Donald Trump\u2019s\u00a02025 anti-voting executive order, much of which courts have\u00a0permanently blocked.\nThe Court\u2019s Republican-appointed majority lifted a lower-court order that found the Department of Homeland Security\u2019s (DHS) modification and use of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlement (SAVE) system \u201ctrampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote.\u201d\nSIGN UP TODAY\nGet updates straight to your inbox \u2014 for free\nJoin 350,000 readers who rely on our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest in voting, elections and democracy.\nJustice Ketanji Brown Jackson strongly disagreed with the decision, saying the Court, in granting a stay, disregarded \u201cthe harms that the modified SAVE system has caused, and will likely continue to cause, to lawful voters.\u201d\n\u201cIn my view, however, 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,\u201d Jackson wrote in a dissenting opinion joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.\nThe decision Friday marks a significant loss to voters \u2014 particularly naturalized citizens, who have been disproportionately falsely flagged as ineligible voters when states have fed their registration lists into SAVE.\nIt also deals a blow to voting and privacy groups challenging DHS\u2019s overhaul of SAVE as a violation of federal privacy laws and an unconstitutional attempt to usurp states\u2019 authority over elections.\u00a0\nSAVE has existed for decades as a tool that lets states check the immigration status of people applying for government benefits.\u00a0\nHowever, in the 2025 executive order, Trump directed DHS to transform the database into a sweeping tool to vet state voter rolls.\nThe Supreme Court granted the Department of Justice\u2019s (DOJ) request to stay the lower-court ruling even though a coalition of voting and privacy advocates led by the League of Women Voters warned that SAVE was never designed to check voter eligibility and, when used this way, will erroneously flag eligible voters as noncitizens.\nThe D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals denied the administration\u2019s emergency request to pause the lower court\u2019s injunction earlier this month.\nCurrently, federal law bars states from conducting systematic voter purges, as the country is within what\u2019s known as the \u201cquiet period\u201d \u2014 a 90-day window before an election when the National Voter Registration Act forbids systematic removals from the registration lists.\nHowever, the DOJ has argued that the quiet period does not prevent states from removing individual voters from their rolls before an election if the federal government flags those people as suspected noncitizens.\nThe modifications to SAVE that Trump demanded included incorporating huge amounts of Americans\u2019 personal data \u2014 including from the Social Security Administration (SSA), the Department of State and other agencies across the federal government \u2014 into the system.\nIn her dissent, Jackson said the inclusion of Social Security numbers in the modified SAVE system explicitly violated confidentiality requirements in the law that created the SSA.\n\u201cNothing,\u201d Jackson wrote, \u201cauthorizes the modified SAVE system or overrides the provisions of the Social Security Act and the Privacy Act that Respondents say the Government has violated. And the Government puts forward no nonforfeited arguments that the modifications to SAVE in fact complied with the Social Security Act\u2019s confidentiality provision.\u201d\nRecent state uses of the modified SAVE system indicate it has a significantly high error rate in verifying voter eligibility. When Texas became the first state to use it last year, it said the system identified \u201c2,724 potential noncitizens\u201d on its voter registration list.\u00a0\nHowever, in subsequent investigations, county officials confirmed that at least 578 of those people were citizens, an error rate of at least 21%. That means that one in five people identified by the system were ultimately citizens who could have been de-registered \u2014 and therefore disenfranchised \u2014 through no fault of their own.\nDespite SAVE\u2019s alarming error rate, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton urged the Supreme Court in a filing to allow the Trump administration\u2019s work on the system to continue, claiming that it had been\u201ctransformational\u201d for the state\u2019s ability to administer elections.\nWhile the DOJ has asserted that SAVE is legal because it\u2019s a voluntary tool, DHS leadership has attempted to force states to run their voter rolls through it by conditioning federal disaster and anti-terrorism funding on the database\u2019s use.\u00a0\nIn fact, earlier this year, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin threatened election officials with criminal charges if they don\u2019t use SAVE.\n\u201cThe states who choose not to participate with the SAVE program and they choose not to participate in secure elections, we will make sure that we make those states a priority to look at who voted in their states and will hold them, the election officials, accountable,\u201d Mullin said.\nDHS officials walked back Mullin\u2019s threat in private meetings, saying the department does not have the statutory authority to charge state election officials.\nIn a case unrelated to the SAVE database but connected to the Trump administration\u2019s use of personal data to increase the executive branch\u2019s control over elections, the State Department told a federal court this week that it will start sharing passport records with unspecified federal agencies \u201cfor the purpose of verifying the identity or citizenship for users accessing government websites and applications, voter eligibility, and other governmental services.\u201d\nThis story has been updated with additional details throughout.",
    "published_at": "2026-09-25T00:00:00+00:00",
    "author_name": "Jacob Knutson",
    "site_name": "Democracy Docket",
    "section": "Election Administration",
    "publisher": "https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/democracydocket\/",
    "ai_headline": "Supreme Court revives DHS use of flawed immigration database for voter purges",
    "ai_simplified_title": "Supreme Court Revives DHS Use of Flawed Immigration Database for Voter Purges",
    "ai_excerpt": "The Supreme Court authorized the Trump administration to use a federal immigration database (SAVE) for voter purges, overturning a lower court's injunction. Critics argue the system is flawed, disproportionately flagging naturalized citizens, and violates privacy laws.",
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