Top court grants Trump bid to use federal database to verify voter rolls

The US Supreme Court has overturned restrictions preventing the Trump administration from utilizing a contentious federal database to investigate potential non-citizens among voters. This program, known as Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (Save), raises privacy concerns as it employs sensitive data from various federal agencies.

Despite a federal judge's ruling in June that the system infringes on citizens' privacy rights, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court decided that the National Voter Registration Act stops broad voter roll purges before elections, thereby limiting the immediate impact of the court's decision. However, states can still independently verify individual voters' citizenship.

Three liberal justices dissented, with Ketanji Brown Jackson expressing concern over the potential disenfranchisement of eligible voters. The Save program, initially established in 1986 for public benefits verification, was expanded by the Trump administration to enable bulk searches using Social Security data. While the Department of Homeland Security program is voluntary for states, the 1996 law obligates the federal government to respond to states' requests for such data.

Voting rights organizations criticized the ruling, warning it could put millions at risk of wrongful targeting by the administration weeks before the midterm elections.