What Did Supreme Court Decide about Program to Verify Citizenship?

The U.S. Supreme Court decided on Friday that the Department of Homeland Security could continue its program to verify citizenship. According to Fred Lucas at The Daily Signal, the shadow docket ruling was 6-3 in the case of DHS v. League of Women Voters allowing “the Trump administration to expand the program that allows states to use Social Security records and other information to check voters’ citizenship status.” 

“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 opinion says.

The three liberals, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented.

The majority held that a 1996 federal law banning noncitizen voting likely authorizes DHS to obtain citizenship information from other agencies, including state agencies.

A shadow docket ruling is a Supreme Court order, often issued on an expedited basis without full oral arguments.

“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 (HRIRA),” the majority opinion says.

Plaintiffs, led by the League of Women Voters, argued this could violate privacy rights. They also argued that the SAVE database, short for Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, is unreliable and risks purging eligible voters.

In June, U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan of the District of Columbia ruled that a portion of President Donald 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 the district court ruling pending appeal in a 2-1 ruling.

The case centered on a partnership between the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to expand the SAVE database. The expansion allowed agencies to search individuals using Social Security numbers, aggregate large amounts of data, and function as a citizenship verification tool to screen voter eligibility.