SAVE program – A federal judge ruled the Trump administration violated privacy protections by expanding the SAVE citizenship verification program with Social Security data for voter roll purges, halting use of the expanded system to identify noncitizens on state voter lists.
On Monday, a federal judge stopped the government from using an expanded citizenship-verification system to target state voter rolls—specifically because it relied on Social Security data in ways that, she ruled, violated privacy protections.
The ruling from US District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan halted the use of the expanded SAVE system. known as the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements. The program has long been used to verify citizenship for public benefits. but it has also been offered to election officials to check voter rolls for noncitizens.
Sooknanan, an appointee of President Joe Biden, framed the decision as a protection for the voting rights of American citizens. “All in all. the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote. This Court cannot stand idly by while that happens,” she said.
The case is tied to changes made in the early months of Donald Trump’s second term. At that time. the administration beefed up the program by expanding the types of data fed into SAVE—adding Social Security data and data from other agency sources. In Sooknanan’s Monday ruling. she wrote that the administration knew the revamp violated privacy protections passed by Congress but moved forward anyway.
She pointed to the administration’s stated urgency tied to a scramble to comply with an Executive Order aimed at reshaping federal elections—an order that directed the creation of a system for mass voter verification.
After the overhaul, the administration encouraged states to use the enhanced system. It has also sought to punish states that don’t. The government’s approach extended beyond SAVE itself: the Justice Department launched an unprecedented effort to collect each state’s unredacted voter registration file so the federal government could check voter rolls against the citizenship data program.
A newer executive order by Trump also directed the Department of Homeland Security to use SAVE and other federal data sources to assemble lists of voting-age citizens for each state.
It remains unclear how Sooknanan’s order will affect those broader projects in practice. Still, the story of pushback has already been playing out in other court fights.
DHS General Counsel James Percival condemned the decision. “It’s amazing how hard the Left will fight to stop us from solving problems they insist do not exist. Judge Sparkle Soknanan’s latest ruling preventing DHS from addressing alien voting is just the latest example!” Percival said on X.
The lawsuit before Sooknanan was brought by several voter advocacy organizations and a privacy group. The challengers argued that their privacy rights were harmed and that their members faced the risk of being wrongly flagged as noncitizens—an outcome they say is possible because the SAVE system can be outdated or inaccurate.
Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, said the decision was a “important victory for the American people and our democracy.” He added: “The data at the heart of this lawsuit was unlawfully consolidated in violation of privacy laws intended to protect sensitive personal information.”
Where the legal fight goes next is now the question hanging over the halted program. For the moment. Sooknanan’s order blocks the expanded SAVE system from being used to identify noncitizens on state voter rolls. underlining how quickly a tool meant for citizenship verification can become entangled with the real-world mechanics of who gets to vote—and who might be mistakenly pulled into the consequences.
SAVE Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements Social Security data voter roll purges privacy protections federal judge Sparkle Sooknanan Democracy Forward Skye Perryman James Percival Department of Homeland Security Justice Department unredacted voter registration files