The Supreme Court on Friday allowed the federal government to deploy its own immigration database to check voters’ citizenship. Here’s what else to expect as the Trump administration pushes to expand its role in elections.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday restored an expanded immigration database, known as the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system, which the Trump administration says is designed to prevent non-citizens from voting. Critics, including the League of Women Voters and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, argue that this system, which has been modified to include U.S.-born citizens' records and Social Security numbers, could disenfranchise eligible voters. The ruling came just 39 days before the November 3, 2026, election.

Initially, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., had blocked the government from using the modified SAVE system, citing violations of federal privacy laws, the Social Security Act, and administrative agency laws. The judge stated that the government "knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens" and that "states have partnered with the federal government to access the database and are actively removing United States citizens from voter rolls based on inaccurate information." However, the Supreme Court's majority opinion, which was unsigned, paused this ruling, asserting that the lower court's order "inhibits the Federal Government’s efforts to assist state and local agencies in the proper administration of the midterm elections."

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in a dissenting opinion joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, criticized the decision as a "questionable interim ruling" and highlighted the potential harms to lawful voters. The dispute began in March when President Trump issued an executive order directing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Social Security Administration (SSA) to establish systems for verifying voters' citizenship and immigration status. DHS subsequently modified the SAVE system, which had previously been used for decades to check immigrants' eligibility for public benefits, to allow bulk checking of voter rolls against federal citizenship and immigration records.

The Trump administration, through U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer, argued that the district court's order was "indefensible" and threatened election integrity. They also contended that the challengers lacked legal standing, an argument the Supreme Court majority rejected, noting that a member of the League of Women Voters in Louisiana was impacted by the system. While the Supreme Court acknowledged the groups' standing, it ultimately found that they were unlikely to prevail on the merits of their claims, citing a 1996 federal immigration law that expressly authorized DHS to request and receive citizenship information from other agencies, including the SSA.

Twenty-seven states currently use the SAVE system to check voter citizenship. Despite the ruling, widespread removal of voters before the November election is unlikely due to federal laws prohibiting systematic voter removal within 90 days of an election. However, the administration will be able to resume full use of the SAVE system to scrutinize voter rolls after the election and can use it in the interim to check individual voters. Concerns about the system's reliability have been raised, with reports from Texas indicating that a significant percentage of individuals flagged as non-citizens were indeed U.S. citizens.