Overview
- A federal judge vacated the 2025 modifications to the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, and enjoined the government from using the revamped system to check citizenship or purge voter rolls, a decision issued Monday.
- The court found the SAVE overhaul combined USCIS citizenship data with Social Security Administration records, gave users access to Social Security numbers, and allowed bulk queries that created a centralized clearinghouse Congress had barred.
- Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan concluded the changes violated the Social Security Act, the federal Privacy Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act and described agency officials as having known the setup breached statutory limits.
- The ruling noted that states had already run voter lists through the modified SAVE system and that the tool produced inaccurate matches that led to some eligible voters being wrongly flagged as noncitizens and removed from registration rolls.
- The decision undercuts the administration’s push to expand federal involvement in election checks and could complicate related DOJ suits seeking unredacted voter files and any DHS plans to tie grant conditions to state use of SAVE.