Supreme Court lets DHS resume expanded SAVE voter checks, but 90-day rule limits pre-midterm purges

The Supreme Court on Friday allowed the Trump administration to resume, for now, an expanded Department of Homeland Security database used to check voter citizenship, staying lower-court orders that had blocked the revamped Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program, or SAVE.¹

The unsigned emergency order in Department of Homeland Security v. League of Women Voters lets DHS operate the modified SAVE system while appeals continue. The court said the government was likely to prevail on its argument that federal immigration law authorizes DHS to receive and share citizenship-status information with state and local officials, including for voter-verification requests.¹

But the order also highlighted a major constraint: The National Voter Registration Act requires states to complete any program meant to systematically remove ineligible voters from federal-election rolls no later than 90 days before Election Day.¹ With the 2026 general election set for November 3, that deadline has passed, limiting what election officials can do with SAVE before the midterms.³

What the court allowed

The modified SAVE program expands a system originally used to verify immigration or citizenship status for public-benefits programs. Under the Trump administration’s overhaul, SAVE was linked to Social Security Administration records and configured to allow state and local officials to submit bulk voter-list searches, rather than only individual queries.¹⁵

The Supreme Court stayed a June 22 order by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that had vacated the modified program and related notices. The court said 8 U.S.C. §1373 likely supersedes conflicting disclosure limits and requires DHS to respond to state and local citizenship-verification inquiries.¹ The majority also said the lower-court injunction prevented the federal government from using the tool it considered best suited to assist election officials.⁴

The order does not finally decide the program’s legality. It keeps the modified SAVE system available while the case proceeds in the D.C. Circuit and, potentially, returns to the Supreme Court on a full petition for review.¹

The practical limit before November 3

The court’s most immediate caveat concerns timing. The NVRA bars systematic voter-roll removal programs within 90 days of a federal election, a restriction the court said “limits the potential impact” of its stay.¹

That means election officials generally cannot use SAVE for broad purge programs before the November 3 midterms. The court, however, distinguished mass roll maintenance from individualized citizenship checks, saying individual inquiries remain permitted during the 90-day period.¹⁴

Use of SAVE is voluntary for states, according to reporting by The Associated Press published by The Texas Tribune.² In practice, that leaves state and local officials with a narrower path before Election Day: They may consult the system for particular voters or registrations, but broad, systematic removals face federal timing limits unless courts later interpret the NVRA differently.²⁸

The Supreme Court noted that it was not resolving a separate pending dispute over the scope of the NVRA’s 90-day rule, including whether it applies to programs aimed at removing alleged noncitizens.¹⁸

Lower courts cited privacy and accuracy concerns

The district court had sided with the League of Women Voters, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and other challengers, finding that the SAVE overhaul violated the Social Security Act, the Privacy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act.¹⁷ U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan concluded that the aggregation and disclosure of sensitive Social Security data unlawfully repurposed federal records for voter-roll checks.⁷

The challengers also argued that the database could misidentify eligible voters, particularly recently naturalized citizens whose Social Security records may not reflect their current citizenship status.¹⁶ DHS and state officials have said SAVE results require follow-up investigation, but the risk of erroneous flags has become central to the case.⁸

In Texas, officials in Travis County said they reviewed 97 voters flagged by SAVE as apparent noncitizens and found that at least 10% — and possibly as many as 21% — were U.S. citizens, according to the AP report.² NPR/KERA also reported that Texas ran an 18 million-voter list through SAVE, producing 2,724 potential noncitizen flags that counties then had to address under state procedures.⁷

Jackson dissent warns of voter harm

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.¹ Jackson said the court acted without full briefing or oral argument and failed to adequately consider harms to lawful voters who could be burdened or removed because of faulty or stale data.¹⁶

Her dissent emphasized that SAVE’s expanded connection to Social Security’s NUMIDENT files exposed sensitive personal information and that inconclusive results could force citizens to prove their eligibility to remain registered.¹⁵ She argued that even a small number of erroneous burdens on eligible voters outweighed the government’s claimed harm from being unable to use a program the lower court found unlawful.¹

The dissent also challenged the majority’s reading of the 1996 immigration statute, saying it should not override separate privacy protections governing Social Security records.¹⁷

A partial win, not a full pre-election green light

The order is a significant emergency-docket victory for the White House’s broader push to identify alleged noncitizen voting, an issue the administration has made a central election-integrity priority.²⁸ It revives a tool capable of large-scale citizenship checks and signals that a majority of the court is skeptical of the lower courts’ privacy-law reasoning.¹³

Still, its immediate electoral effect is constrained. States may request individualized SAVE checks before November 3, and DHS may respond. But broad voter-roll purges based on systematic SAVE searches remain limited by the NVRA’s 90-day rule unless and until courts say otherwise.¹⁴

For election officials, the ruling creates a narrow operational window: The database is back online for voter citizenship verification, but the strongest legal use before the midterms is case-by-case review, not mass cancellation of registrations.¹²