Federal judge blocks Trump administration’s overhaul of SAVE database

This article was originally published by Votebeat.

A federal judge on Monday blocked the Trump administration’s overhaul of an immigration verification system to check voter eligibility across the nation, striking down a central pillar of the government’s efforts to exercise more federal control over elections.

The judge cited Texas’ use of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, database, which flagged several voters who were actually citizens as noncitizens, as evidence that it threatened both privacy and voting rights less than five months before the November midterm election.

“The federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote,” Judge Sparkle Sooknanan said in her 75-page ruling. “This Court cannot stand idly by while that happens.”

Sooknanan’s decision does not eliminate SAVE, a decades-old immigration-status verification program. But it blocks the Trump administration’s 2025 overhaul of the system, which made it easier for states to check their voter rolls against the federal database, which includes individuals’ citizenship status and Social Security numbers.

Election officials have found that the modified database, however, is prone to error, something Sooknanan referenced in her decision. Federal officials, she wrote, “haphazardly combined and repurposed the private information of millions of Americans, including citizenship data that they knew to be unreliable.”

The ruling could strengthen challenges by voters who were removed, flagged, or placed under review by the system.

“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,” the judge wrote.

Voting Rights Groups, Trump Administration React to Ruling

The case was filed by the League of Women Voters and other groups who argued that the SAVE system was inaccurate and that using it to check voter rolls violated citizen privacy rights.

“Today’s decision is a resounding victory for voters,” said Marcia Johnson, chief of activation and justice for the League of Women Voters. “Efforts to create a federal voter database to facilitate voter purges threaten the fundamental right at the heart of our democracy.”

Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School who worked in the White House on democracy and voting rights issues under President Joe Biden, agreed that voters would benefit from the ruling.

“This provides incremental reassurance that they won’t be inaccurately singled out and have to jump through even more hoops to vote,” he said. “It stops the use of a deeply flawed process to cause trouble for real eligible citizens.”

However, James Percival, the general counsel at the Department of Homeland Security, which maintains the SAVE database, criticized the ruling as a misguided effort to block the Trump administration from trying to address voter fraud.

“It’s amazing how hard the Left will fight to stop us from solving problems they insist do not exist,” Percival said in a statement.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Michael Morley, a professor at the Florida State University College of Law and faculty director of the FSU Election Law Center, said the ruling prevents the federal government from using all the information at its disposal to ensure that only eligible voters take part in elections.

“It seems to leave the government in a somewhat tenuous position of being able to provide citizenship data to states for voting purposes that is less accurate than it otherwise would be,” he said. “It restricts the government’s ability to take advantage of all of the most accurate sources of information it has in order, in most cases, to confirm people’s citizenship status.”

Judge Cites Texas’ Use of SAVE Database in Ruling

Texas intervened as a defendant in the case since it had been actively using SAVE to verify the citizenship status of its more than 18 million registered voters. The state gained access to the database in March 2025 after signing a memorandum of agreement with the Department of Homeland Security.

In October, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office announced SAVE had flagged 2,724 people as “potential noncitizens” and sent the list to county election officials to investigate. That process involved mailing letters to each person flagged, requesting additional information to verify their citizenship. If county officials received no response after 30 days, the person’s registration was canceled.

Some voters who responded to the notices turned out to be U.S. citizens after all; others had their registrations canceled, although a specific number hasn’t been released. Hundreds of other registrants who were flagged had registered at the Texas Department of Public Safety, the agency that issues driver’s licenses and state IDs. In Texas, proof of citizenship is required to obtain those documents.

In the ruling, Sooknanan said the state’s use of the database burdened and risked disenfranchising voters by incorrectly flagging naturalized citizens as noncitizens. The judge pointed to examples of voters in Texas who were U.S. citizens and had to provide proof of citizenship to keep their registration active and at least one U.S. citizen whose registration was revoked without their knowledge.

Sooknanan also pointed to an amicus brief filed by Travis County voter registration officials as evidence that the use of the overhauled SAVE database was inaccurate. The state flagged 97 potential noncitizens in Travis County. Voter registration officials found that about a quarter of those voters had registered at DPS and therefore had likely provided proof of citizenship.

Travis County officials were later able to confirm that at least 11 people who were flagged as potential noncitizens were in fact citizens.

“Texas threatened to revoke their voter registrations because of information obtained through the modified SAVE system; and they were required to confirm their citizenship to maintain their voter registrations,” Sooknanan said.

The secretary of state’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Celia Israel, the Travis County tax assessor-collector and voter registrar, said the ruling is “validating.”

“We have asked a lot of questions in the past several months about the SAVE database and about its accuracy,” Israel said. “The lawsuit confirms that there are inaccuracies and that it is worthwhile for us officials at the county level to ask the state questions.”

Other civil rights groups and voters have also challenged Texas’ use of the database in a federal court in Austin. The lawsuit is still pending.