The Supreme Court’s GOP-appointed majority granted an emergency bid from the Trump administration to use a citizenship database, over dissent from the court’s Democratic appointees that said the majority prioritized nonexistent harms to the government over real harms to voters.

The administration sought urgent relief after a federal judge said the government “knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote.” U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan found those government violations when she issued a June 22 order against the administration using the “modified SAVE” database.

“SAVE” refers to the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program maintained by the Department of Homeland Security to verify citizenship and immigration status. The administration’s 2025 overhaul made three major modifications: to include the records of natural-born citizens, to access social security records and to permit bulk searches of records by SAVE users.

In an opinion on Friday, the Supreme Court majority said 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.” The court’s three Democratic appointees argued that the government wasn’t entitled to the urgent relief that the majority granted.

The majority said the federal government would likely suffer irreparable harm without the urgent relief granted on Friday. The court said the 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 blocks the government “from using the program it believes is best suited to the task.”

Writing on behalf of the court’s Democratic appointees, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the majority misused its powers by focusing only on purported harms to the government while “disregarding the harms that the modified SAVE system has caused, and will likely continue to cause, to lawful voters.” Joined by fellow Democratic-appointed Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, she said the harm caused by burdening or disenfranchising even a few of those voters “outweighs the nonexistent harm that the Government experiences when it is prevented from taking an action that it likely lacks the authority to take.”

The League of Women Voters and the Electronic Privacy Information Center challenged the overhaul, leading Sooknanan to issue the June ruling in their favor, as she found the government activity “unlawful in several respects,” including the illegal disclosure of Social Security numbers and related records. A divided federal appellate panel in Washington likewise rejected the administration over dissent from a Trump appointee.

The administration then turned to the high court, calling the Biden-appointed district judge’s order “indefensible.” Urging the justices to halt the order, Solicitor General John Sauer said it 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.”

Opposing the administration’s application, the voting and privacy groups said the government “recklessly created an error-laden master citizenship database that endangers millions of Americans’ privacy and voting rights.”

They said the government made the system despite knowing it was illegal and “risked misidentifying eligible voters as non-citizens.” And they said their members were among the American citizens whose privacy and voting rights were violated and would be placed at risk again if Sooknanan’s order is lifted.

With the November elections “already underway,” they said, reviving the program “would needlessly introduce confusion and administrative burdens amid an ongoing election cycle.”

In its unsigned “per curiam” opinion on Friday, the Supreme Court majority noted that federal law bars state and local election officials from systematically purging their voter rolls in the weeks leading up to federal elections. The majority said that provision limits the impact of its decision to lift the district judge’s order, which the majority said wrongly blocked individualized inquiries allowed under federal law.

In her dissent, Jackson said that if the ruling has a “bright side,” it’s that limited short-term impact, which allows only for those individualized inquiries as opposed to sweeping purges ahead of the November elections.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

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