The Supreme Court handed the Trump administration a significant win on Friday, allowing the Department of Homeland Security to move forward with its citizenship verification program for voter eligibility screening. The 6-3 ruling came in the case of DHS v. League of Women Voters and was issued as a shadow docket order, meaning it was decided on an expedited basis without full oral arguments.
The majority opinion held that a 1996 federal law banning noncitizen voting likely authorizes DHS to obtain citizenship information from other agencies, including state agencies and the Social Security Administration. The program in question uses Social Security records and other data to allow states to check the citizenship status of voters.
What the Majority Found
The court’s majority pointed to the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 as the legal basis for the program’s expansion.
“In 1996, Congress, however, separately and expressly authorized DHS to request and receive information relating to citizenship and immigration status from other agencies, including SSA, in the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA),”
the majority opinion states.
The ruling also addressed the scope of congressional intent.
“By prohibiting interference with the disclosure of information regarding citizenship status to DHS, ‘notwithstanding any other provision of Federal, State, or local law,’ Congress necessarily authorized DHS to request and receive that information,”
the majority wrote. The three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented from the decision.
League of Women Voters and the SAVE Database
Plaintiffs led by the League of Women Voters argued the program threatens privacy rights and risks wrongly purging eligible voters from registration rolls. Their concerns centered on the SAVE database, the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system, which they described as unreliable. According to noncitizen voting verification ruling, the expanded database allows agencies to search individuals using Social Security numbers and aggregate large volumes of data to screen voter eligibility.
The legal battle had already wound through the lower courts. In June, U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan of the District of Columbia ruled that a portion of President Trump’s March 2025 executive order on election integrity was unlawful. Earlier this month, a D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals panel denied the administration’s motion to stay that ruling pending appeal, in a 2-1 decision.
What Comes Next
With the Supreme Court’s order now in place, DHS can continue expanding its partnership with the Social Security Administration to use the SAVE database as a citizenship verification tool during the appeals process. The underlying legal questions, including the scope of federal authority and the reliability of the database, are likely to be argued more fully as the case proceeds through the courts.
The administration’s push to verify voter citizenship status has become one of the more contested elements of Trump’s broader election integrity agenda, and Friday’s ruling signals that the effort will continue, at least for now, with the court’s approval.
