Judge allows Florida and three states access to voter citizenship database

A federal judge in Florida ordered the Department of Homeland Security to restore Florida, Indiana, Iowa and Ohio’s access to the federal citizenship-check database. The ruling by U.S. District Judge T. Kent Wetherell II put his court on a direct collision course with a June 22 order from Washington, D.C., that had barred use of the revamped system.

The dispute centers on SAVE, the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program run by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The Trump administration expanded the decades-old database to allow bulk searches, use of full or partial Social Security numbers, and links to Social Security Administration data. Under the Florida settlement, DHS must provide SAVE access at no cost, respond to requests within 48 hours and process bulk inquiries.

Florida, Indiana, Iowa and Ohio signed that deal with DHS on Nov. 28, 2025, and a court approved it in early December 2025, making it judicially enforceable for 20 years. Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd welcomed the agreement as a way to “help secure accurate voter rolls” and “improve and modernize the SAVE database for decades to come.” The order restored the states’ access after the Washington ruling suspended the same system.

Judge Sparkle Sooknanan said the government had unlawfully aggregated Americans’ personal information and blocked the Trump administration from using the revamped database to check state voter rolls. She also said the tool had already been used to check the citizenship status of more than 60 million voter records. By the time the Florida ruling was entered, that figure had risen above 67 million.

Voting-rights groups, including the League of Women Voters and allied organizations that sued over SAVE, have warned that expanded citizenship checks could wrongly flag naturalized citizens and other eligible voters as noncitizens, setting off unlawful purges. The Justice Department under President Donald Trump has also sought complete voter rolls from at least half the states.