Supreme Court allows new SAVE citizenship voter verification system to proceed

Key Takeaways

On Sept. 25, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the White House to resume using an expanded Department of Homeland Security (DHS) citizenship verification database to check voter registration rolls across the country. The system, known as the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system, now links to Social Security Administration (SSA) data and allows state and local officials to check voter citizenship eligibility in bulk.

Background

The SAVE system has been used historically to verify citizenship for public assistance program eligibility using immigration and naturalization records. However, following the White House’s Executive Order 14248 in March 2025, DHS began expanding the SAVE system to include data from the Social Security Administration (SSA), including Social Security numbers, names and dates of birth. DHS also began allowing state and local governments to submit large batches of individuals to verify citizenship against SSA data, rather than running individual checks.

A lawsuit from voting rights and privacy groups, including the League of Women Voters and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, resulted in a lower court blocking the administration from using this modified SAVE database to check voters’ citizenship, finding that it violated federal privacy law, the Social Security Act and the Administrative Procedure Act. Following that ruling, the administration asked the Supreme Court for an emergency stay which the Court granted, allowing system implementation to resume while litigation continues.

The Court wrote in an unsigned ruling that the lower court’s order prevented the federal government from carrying out its legal requirement to respond to state and local election officials’ citizenship verification requests.

While the federal government can continue using the database ahead of November’s elections, the Court noted that state and local governments cannot conduct systematic voter roll purges, as federal law prevents such removal within 90 days of a federal election, though individualized citizenship checks remain permitted during that period. 

County Impact

County governments provide essential voter registration and election administration services in states across the country. For the upcoming November elections, counties should expect the modified SAVE program to be available in states that use it and should coordinate with their state’s chief election administrator to ensure voter rolls are updated. Still, the 90-day rule means that counties should not expect systematic voter roll purges before the midterms. Counties should prepare individual inquiries into voter eligibility rather than mass list changes.