US Supreme Court lifts ban on Trump administration’s voter‑citizenship database

The US Supreme Court on Friday overturned a lower‑court order that had barred the Trump administration from using the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database to check voter citizenship.

The Court ruled that the 1996 National Voter Registration Act permits states to request citizenship and immigration data from federal agencies, limiting any “potential impact” of the decision in the weeks before the midterm elections. While the ruling allows states to conduct individual checks, it does not permit broad purges of voter rolls.

The three liberal‑leaning justices dissented. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warned that the decision could mistakenly disenfranchise lawful voters, writing that “the harm caused by burdening or disenfranchising even a few lawful voters outweighs the non‑existent harm” to the government.

Critics note that the SAVE programme, created in 1986 for benefit eligibility verification, was expanded last year to allow bulk searches using Social Security data. In June, US District Judge Sparkle L Soonnan had ruled the revamped system illegal, citing privacy violations.

Voting‑rights groups, including the League of Women Voters, called the ruling “profoundly disappointing,” saying it puts millions of Americans at risk of unlawful targeting ahead of the elections. The SAVE system is currently used by 27 states, though errors have already been reported, such as in Travis County, Texas, where at least 10 % of flagged voters were later found to be citizens.

Source: BBC News. Photo: Brett Sayles / Pexels.