The Trump administration’s Department of Justice has asked the Supreme Court to step in and let the government use an updated version of a federal database program that states rely on to check whether people on their voter rolls are eligible to vote.
Solicitor General John Sauer filed the request on Tuesday, asking the justices to stay a June order from U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan, who was appointed to the District of Columbia court by former President Joe Biden. Sooknanan’s order blocked the government from using an updated version of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program, known as SAVE, which had been changed to make it easier for states to identify and remove ineligible voters, including foreign nationals, from their rolls.
Sauer described Sooknanan’s order as “indefensible,” arguing it “threatens the integrity of upcoming elections by vacating the federal government’s authority to internally use Social Security data when fulfilling its duty to respond to requests by States to verify the citizenship of individuals for voting and other purposes.”
“The order will irreparably harm the federal government, the States, and the public by depriving the government of an effective tool to verify the eligibility of registered voters and benefits applicants under various state and federal programs,” Sauer wrote in the filing to the Supreme Court.
Sooknanan, who was born in Trinidad and Tobago, had grounded her order in concerns about privacy and voting rights. She wrote that the updated SAVE program “implicates two fundamental rights that protect Americans from government overreach: the right to privacy and the right to vote,” and said the federal government “has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote.”
“This Court cannot stand idly by while that happens,” Sooknanan wrote.
The dispute is now before the Supreme Court as League of Women Voters et al v. DHS, No. 26A. The outcome could determine whether states have access to the updated verification tool ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
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