Judge blocks use of federal voter database to check citizenship, saying it could wrongly purge voters

A federal judge in Washington blocked the Trump administration from using a revamped federal database to check whether voters are citizens, saying the program’s expanded design could violate privacy protections and risk wrongly purging eligible voters from voter rolls.

U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan issued the ruling on June 22, halting use of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, database for voter-verification purposes while the case continues. The decision is a significant setback for the administration’s push to use federal data more aggressively in election administration.

The ruling immediately puts one of the administration’s central election-verification efforts on hold. It also raises a broader question about how far the federal government can go in centralizing personal data for use in state election systems.

What the judge blocked

The lawsuit challenged the Trump administration’s expanded use of SAVE to check voter registrations in bulk and to help election officials verify citizenship. According to AP’s reporting, the judge said the changes to the system aggregated Americans’ sensitive personal information in a way Congress had not authorized.

The court also accepted the plaintiffs’ concern that the program could lead to eligible voters being wrongly removed from the rolls. That risk was especially important in a case involving citizenship matching, where even a small error rate can have major consequences for lawful voters.

The order blocks use of the revamped database for voter verification while the case proceeds. It does not resolve the underlying legal fight over whether the program can be used in any form.

Why SAVE drew a challenge

SAVE was originally created to help verify eligibility for government benefits, not to operate as a nationwide voter database. The Trump administration expanded it in 2025 so it could search voter registrations in bulk and become available to election officials for voter-roll checks.

That expansion made the system more controversial. Voting by noncitizens is illegal, but critics said the new setup created a different problem: it could sweep in eligible voters, including naturalized citizens, if records did not match cleanly across federal systems.

AP reported in May that roughly 67 million voter registrations had already been scanned through the program. Critics warned at the time that the effort could produce false positives and create the risk of a broader purge if states relied too heavily on the results.

Who sued and what they argued

The lawsuit was brought by advocacy groups including the League of Women Voters and privacy organizations such as the Electronic Privacy Information Center. They argued that the revised system centralized sensitive personal data in a way Congress did not allow.

Their challenge tied together two concerns: privacy and voting rights. The plaintiffs said the administration could not repurpose a benefits-verification system into a large-scale election tool without running into statutory limits and the risk of false matches.

The judge’s ruling gave those claims enough weight to stop the program, at least for now. That makes the case a closely watched test of how election administration rules interact with federal privacy protections.

Administration response and next steps

The Department of Homeland Security defended the program in a social-media post after the ruling, and the Justice Department said it would continue to defend the administration’s use of SAVE to verify citizenship.

That response points to an appeal fight or a request for emergency relief. The administration can ask a higher court to lift the block while the litigation continues, and the plaintiffs are likely to seek to keep the order in place.

If the ruling stands, states that had been using SAVE may need to pause or revise their voter-roll checking procedures. The practical effect would be to limit how quickly the administration can use the expanded database in election administration.

The case fits a broader pattern of Trump administration election and voter-verification efforts meeting court resistance. AP reported that the SAVE expansion was part of a wider push to nationalize election administration and target alleged noncitizen voting.

For now, the court has drawn a line around how the government can use the database. The next stage of the dispute will likely turn on whether appellate courts keep that line in place.