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A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from continuing to operate an expanded voter verification database that combined sensitive federal records, ruling that the system violated privacy protections and jeopardized eligible Americans’ voting rights.
In a 75-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan concluded that the administration unlawfully merged citizenship information maintained by the Department of Homeland Security with data from the Social Security Administration through a modified version of the federal SAVE database.
“The federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote,” Sooknanan wrote. “This Court cannot stand idly by while that happens.”
The ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by the League of Women Voters and other advocacy groups, including organizations represented by Democracy Forward and the American Civil Liberties Union.
At issue was the administration’s revised SAVE system, which officials promoted as a tool for identifying noncitizens on voter rolls. According to the court, the database relied on citizenship and Social Security information that Congress had not authorized to be consolidated for election enforcement purposes.
Sooknanan found that states had already begun using the system to review voter registration records and that some eligible voters were incorrectly flagged as noncitizens.
“Since then, states have run their voter rolls through the modified SAVE system, and some of the Plaintiffs’ members have been wrongfully identified as non-citizens by SAVE, resulting in the cancellation of their voter registrations,” the judge wrote.
The ruling immediately halts implementation of the revised system and represents a significant setback for President Donald Trump‘s broader effort to reshape election administration nationwide.
The administration has argued that tighter voter verification measures are necessary to protect election integrity. Critics, however, have maintained that noncitizen voting is exceedingly rare and that flawed citizenship databases risk disenfranchising eligible voters.
In her decision, Sooknanan found that the administration likely violated both the Social Security Act and the Privacy Act by allowing states access to sensitive personal information for purposes not authorized under federal law.
The judge also sharply criticized the administration’s handling of inaccurate records, stating that falsely identifying citizens as noncitizens can carry serious consequences and potentially imply criminal wrongdoing.
She wrote that government arguments minimizing the harm caused by such errors “border on the absurd.”
The ruling marks another judicial obstacle for several Trump administration election initiatives, many of which have faced legal scrutiny over questions of executive authority and voter access.
Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, praised the decision.
“The data at the heart of this lawsuit was unlawfully consolidated in violation of privacy laws intended to protect sensitive personal information,” Perryman said in a statement.
The Trump administration is expected to appeal the ruling to the federal appeals court in Washington.
