SCOTUS Stays SAVE Database Injunction 6-3 — Greenlights Voter-Purge Machinery as Midterm Ballots Go Out

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to stay the lower-court injunction blocking the Trump administration's revamped DHS SAVE database (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements), permitting states to resume using the immigration-benefits system for voter-citizenship verification while litigation continues — weeks before midterm ballots go out. The stay was granted without full briefing or oral argument. The majority wrote that "the Federal Government has an obligation to respond to requests from state and local election officials seeking to verify the citizenship of voters" and that the district court's order "inhibits the Federal Government's efforts to assist state and local agencies in the proper administration of the midterm elections." Justices Jackson, Sotomayor, and Kagan dissented, noting DHS skipped the legally mandated System of Records Notice (SORN) for the expanded database and that the majority overturned careful lower-court rulings "without deliberation." The June 2026 injunction by Judge Sparkle Sooknanan (75 pages) had found the government "knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote" and that states using the system "are actively removing United States citizens from voter rolls based on inaccurate information." Since the April 2025 expansion, at least 25 states ran roughly 67 million registrations through the system, flagging about 24,000 voters for investigation — Texas alone flagged 2,700, many of them citizens who had already proven citizenship at registration. The ruling empowers red states to resume purges through what was a key pillar of Trump's second election executive order.