Federal district judges in two jurisdictions have issued conflicting rulings in recent weeks on whether the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may give states access to an expanded version of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system — which provides information about individuals' immigration and citizenship status — for voter registration and list maintenance purposes.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which runs SAVE, describes the database as providing "point in time immigration status and U.S. citizenship information to federal, state, local, territorial, and tribal agencies. SAVE is fast, secure, and reliable, and enables registered user agencies to make accurate decisions for applicants seeking benefits and licenses." USCIS is a division of DHS.

In 2025, President Donald Trump issued an executive order requiring DHS to make free access to "appropriate systems for verifying the citizenship or immigration status of individuals registering to vote or who are already registered" available to state and local election officials.

In response, USCIS made changes to SAVE, including pulling Social Security Administration records into the database and allowing states to conduct bulk searches.

In September 2025, the League of Women Voters sued, alleging the changes to the database violated federal law. "These dramatic changes far exceed the SAVE system’s limited authorized scope and functionality, which previously did not allow bulk searches or queries of U.S.-born citizens. ... [T]he Privacy Act explicitly prohibits interagency national data banks. ... And the other provisions of the Privacy Act establish specific prerequisites to creating any system of records—which Defendants have defied," the organization's lawyers wrote.

On June 22, 2026, Judge Sparkle Sooknanan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia blocked DHS from allowing states to access the expanded version of SAVE.

In her opinion, Sooknanan said that the changes violated federal data privacy laws and statutes governing administrative rules and regulations.

"All in all, the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote," Sooknanan wrote. "This Court cannot stand idly by while that happens."

After Sooknanan's ruling, DHS disabled the bulk-search feature of SAVE, as well as the ability to search for Social Security numbers. In response, four states — Florida, Iowa, Indiana, and Ohio — asked a federal judge in Florida to allow them to continue to access the expanded SAVE system to comply with a settlement agreement they reached with the federal government last year.

On July 7, Judge T. Kent Wetherell ruled that the four states were being negatively affected by the inability to use the expanded version of SAVE and disagreed with Sooknanan's rationale for blocking the changes.

"The Court understands that this puts Defendants in a bind because they are subject to two contradictory orders—one from this Court requiring them to include certain features in the SAVE system and one from Judge Sooknanan prohibiting them from doing so,” Wetherell wrote. "This Court is not bound by Judge Sooknanan's order, and with all due respect, the Court disagrees with the conclusions in that order."

Wetherell ordered DHS to "immediately comply with the court-approved settlement agreement in this case by reinstating Plaintiffs’ access to the bulk-upload and SSN-search features in the SAVE system."

Following Sooknanan's June 22 ruling, DHS appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and asked Sooknanan to stay her ruling while the case was appealed.

On July 8, Sooknanan denied that request, writing, "Somewhat audaciously, the Federal Defendants ... argue that they are irreparably harmed based on their belief that complying with the Court’s Order 'brings [the Federal] Defendants out of compliance with a' consent decree 'entered in the Northern District of Florida' during the course of this litigation. ... The Federal Defendants thus knew that this suit had the potential to implicate the permissible 'terms' under that agreement and their statutory 'authority' to make certain concessions in a consent decree. ... The Defendants choose to ignore those considerations, making any injury arising from that decision self-inflicted."

On July 9, lawyers for the federal government notified Sooknanan that DHS was in the process of restoring expanded SAVE access to the four states party to the settlement agreement, writing, "The Department of Justice has been informed by the Department of Homeland Security that those [bulk-upload and SSN-search] features of SAVE remain disabled with respect to all users in States other than Florida, Ohio, Iowa, and Indiana. Defendants believe that this approach allows the United States to comply with all outstanding court orders—i.e., this Court’s order of vacatur, and the Florida court’s injunction—to the greatest extent possible."

On July 11, Sooknanan ordered the parties in the D.C. lawsuit to prepare for a hearing on July 20 if they could not reach a resolution out of court by July 13.

Nationally, 28 states have registered with the federal government to use SAVE for voter list maintenance or voter registration. 

Some states have statutes requiring SAVE to be used to regularly check the citizenship status of registered voters or of individuals registering to vote for the first time. As of July 2026, 27 states have statutes that require or authorize election officials to obtain citizenship data from state or federal agencies as part of the voter list maintenance process.