Judge blocks Trump administration’s voter-roll citizenship checks using federal data

A federal judge in Washington blocked the Trump administration from using a federal citizenship database to check state voter rolls, ruling that the effort crossed several legal lines and could wrongly purge eligible voters. U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan said the government had “knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens,” and she stopped the Department of Homeland Security from using its revamped SAVE system as a voter-roll citizenship checker.

The 75-page ruling in League of Women Voters v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security found that the overhaul violated the Social Security Act, the Privacy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act. Sooknanan ordered the government to set aside the 2025 SAVE modifications and related notices and return the system to its prior status, dealing a sharp legal setback to President Donald Trump’s effort to use federal agencies to drive a nationwide crackdown on alleged noncitizens on voter rolls.

The case centered on what the administration did with SAVE, a program originally built to help verify eligibility for public benefits. Trump’s March 31 executive order, titled Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections, directed DHS and the Social Security Administration to compile and transmit a State Citizenship List to states. The upgraded system also allowed bulk searches using partial Social Security numbers, a change critics said turned an immigration-benefits database into a mass voter-screening tool.

According to reporting cited in the case, at least 25 states had used SAVE to check voter rolls since April 2025, and at least 67 million registrations had been scanned through the system. Voting-rights advocates warned that the database was error-prone and could flag naturalized citizens and other eligible voters, setting off baseless investigations and wrongful removals from the rolls.

The lawsuit was brought by the League of Women Voters, its state affiliates in Virginia, Louisiana and Texas, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and individual plaintiffs, with representation from Democracy Forward, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and Fair Elections Center. National and state League leaders called the ruling a victory for voters and privacy protections, while DHS general counsel James Percival criticized the decision in a social media post.

The ruling also fit into a broader judicial pattern. Earlier in 2026, federal courts in California, Michigan and Oregon rejected Justice Department demands for complete state voter registration lists, another sign that courts are increasingly willing to block federal efforts to centralize sensitive voter data ahead of future elections.