{"id":1107,"date":"2026-07-14T14:09:38","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T14:09:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/modernhomejournals.com\/?p=1107"},"modified":"2026-07-14T14:09:38","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T14:09:38","slug":"the-bizarre-court-battle-trapping-trumps-voter-database","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/modernhomejournals.com\/?p=1107","title":{"rendered":"The Bizarre Court Battle Trapping Trump\u2019s Voter Database"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Two federal judges have ordered the Department of Homeland Security to do the opposite thing, at the same time. This summer, conflicting court rulings over the use of Social Security numbers in a citizenship database have created an unusual legal dilemma within President Donald Trump\u2019s aggressive push to create a voter verification system.<\/p>\n

Read more Mike Johnson Is Plotting a Narrow, Fast Reconciliation Bill<\/a><\/p>\n

Last month, a federal judge in Washington sided with voting and privacy groups to halt government changes to the database, including a Social Security number search, ruling it \u201cflunked compliance\u201d with federal Social Security and privacy laws.<\/p>\n

Days later, another federal judge in Florida ordered the government to reinstate those very features, when it comes to four states, finding that complying with the Washington ruling violated a settlement agreement in a separate lawsuit.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Court understands that this puts Defendants in a bind because they are subject to two contradictory orders,\u201d T. Kent Wetherell, a U.S. district judge in Florida, wrote in a July 7 order. \u201cOne of the orders has to give.\u201d<\/p>\n

But which one?<\/p>\n

DHS now faces a tangled legal process over the fate of an overhaul of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, database. It was originally intended to track the status of immigrants in the country but was overhauled after a March 2025 executive order<\/u><\/span> aimed at rooting out potential noncitizen voters.<\/p>\n

That push to allow states to pare down voter databases before the midterms is moving forward in two courts, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida. How it plays out will determine whether the administration can make sensitive information public to promote Trump\u2019s sustained efforts to achieve what he calls election integrity, which have included pressure campaigns aimed at the states.<\/p>\n

The dueling cases represent the complexities behind implementing the president\u2019s aggressive \u2014 and often legislatively fallible \u2014 push to cut down on noncitizen voting, which is already an extremely rare occurrence<\/u><\/span>. If the database is definitively shut down by a higher court, it would mark yet another defeat for the Trump administration on that front.<\/p>\n

Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University whose work focuses in part on elections, said the conflicting orders are \u201cquite rare for a bunch of reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is rare for the law to purport to require an agency to do something, and also for the law to purport to require an agency to do the opposite thing. It\u2019s also quite rare because courts don\u2019t like issuing inconsistent orders,\u201d Levitt said.<\/p>\n

Shut Down<\/b><\/p>\n

DHS updated the SAVE system in April 2025 and formalized the changes months later. The League of Women Voters sued DHS in September 2025, alleging that the SSN search feature constitutes a privacy violation amid broader concerns that the database itself is inaccurate and can lead to American citizens being erroneously flagged as ineligible to vote.<\/p>\n

Judge Sparkle Sooknanan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia shut down the expanded database DHS disabled a bulk-upload functionality and an SSN-search feature of the SAVE system as a result, according to court records.<\/p>\n

But Florida \u2014 joined by Iowa, Ohio and Indiana \u2014 asked a judge to immediately restore access to those features as part of a settlement agreement reached with DHS in November. Wetherell\u2019s July 7 ruling pointed to the states\u2019 interests in ensuring that noncitizens are not on their voter rolls and that people who are unlawfully present in the U.S. do not receive professional licenses.<\/p>\n

\u201cAdmittedly, the Court did not undertake an extensive assessment of the legality of the features that the settlement agreement required the SAVE system to include when it approved the agreement,\u201d Wetherell, a Trump appointee, wrote in a footnote of his 10-page order, \u201cbut it would not have approved the agreement if it had any concern that those features were unlawful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Iran Politics Are Back<\/a><\/p>\n

DHS asked Sooknanan to pause her order, arguing in a court filing that the government faces \u201ca significant risk that it would soon be forced into an impossible dilemma, in which compliance with all outstanding court orders is logically impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sooknanan, a Barack Obama appointee, wrote a scathing denial of that petition, including the government\u2019s argument related to the Florida case. \u201cBut with all due respect, that court, which was no doubt pressed for time with emergency briefing on a motion to enforce the consent decree over a holiday weekend, erred in significant ways,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n

The government then on July 8 asked the D.C. Circuit to pause Sooknanan\u2019s order, again arguing in part that it \u201chas forced DHS to maintain, at substantial cost, both the legacy SAVE and the upgraded system in parallel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Levitt said of the dueling opinions: \u201cSome of this is, seems to me, bad behavior by the litigants, and some of it seems to be some bad behavior by the courts, but it has ended up in a mess.\u201d<\/p>\n

The League of Women Voters\u2019 case will collide with Wetherell\u2019s decision as it heads to D.C. Circuit Court sometime soon. It\u2019s further complicated by a question of jurisdiction: The Florida case, if upheld, would only apply to the four states on the suit, while the other has wider national implications by being tried in D.C. and is more likely to prevail on merit, experts say.<\/p>\n

David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, said the administration\u2019s path forward is \u201cnot clear exactly.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think [DHS] is in much more peril if it now changed the status quo and reactivated the SAVE system in light of the recent D.C. district court,\u201d Becker told reporters on a Thursday call. \u201cAs opposed to if it maintained the status quo, told the courts, \u2018Our hands are tied, tell us what to do,\u2019 and took it up at the appellate court level. It\u2019s not an ideal situation.\u201d<\/p>\n

DHS did not respond to a request for comment about how the agency will move forward with these conflicting judgements.<\/p>\n

But more government directives are piling up in the meantime: Last week, the DOJ sent letters<\/u><\/span> to the chief election officials of every state and D.C. threatening criminal prosecution if they knowingly allow noncitizens to vote.<\/p>\n

The back-and-forth is likely headed to a higher court, legal experts said \u2014 potentially all the way to the Supreme Court \u2014 and it could be a long fight before states can use the overhauled SAVE database again. Meanwhile, states in the Florida case insist the expanded system is vital to election integrity.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to keep that information private, but voting is really, really important. Who we elect is really, really important. Making sure that only American citizens can vote is really, really important,\u201d Florida\u2019s secretary of state, Cord Byrd, told NOTUS. \u201cIt\u2019s always a weighing-and-balancing. The opponents of election integrity reform always roll out the list of horribles, and none of them ever come through.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more James Wood Is Still Growing (And Other Things to Know)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The administration\u2019s attempt at allowing states to pare down voter databases could have dramatic consequences before the midterms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1106,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-courts"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Bizarre Court Battle Trapping Trump\u2019s Voter Database - Modern Home Journals<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/modernhomejournals.com\/?p=1107\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Bizarre Court Battle Trapping Trump\u2019s Voter Database - Modern Home Journals\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The administration\u2019s attempt at allowing states to pare down voter databases could have dramatic consequences before the midterms.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/modernhomejournals.com\/?p=1107\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Modern Home Journals\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-07-14T14:09:38+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/modernhomejournals.com\\\/?p=1107#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/modernhomejournals.com\\\/?p=1107\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/modernhomejournals.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/533de239efc09a2ab59959cc1bff86d0\"},\"headline\":\"The Bizarre Court Battle Trapping Trump\u2019s Voter Database\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-07-14T14:09:38+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/modernhomejournals.com\\\/?p=1107\"},\"wordCount\":1196,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/modernhomejournals.com\\\/?p=1107#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/modernhomejournals.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/07\\\/0334c4c5c0ba232e1e7567cc8fe92b4a-scaled.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Courts\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/modernhomejournals.com\\\/?p=1107#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/modernhomejournals.com\\\/?p=1107\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/modernhomejournals.com\\\/?p=1107\",\"name\":\"The Bizarre Court Battle Trapping Trump\u2019s Voter Database - Modern Home Journals\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/modernhomejournals.com\\\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/modernhomejournals.com\\\/?p=1107#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/modernhomejournals.com\\\/?p=1107#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/modernhomejournals.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/07\\\/0334c4c5c0ba232e1e7567cc8fe92b4a-scaled.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-07-14T14:09:38+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/modernhomejournals.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/533de239efc09a2ab59959cc1bff86d0\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/modernhomejournals.com\\\/?p=1107#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/modernhomejournals.com\\\/?p=1107\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/modernhomejournals.com\\\/?p=1107#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/modernhomejournals.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/07\\\/0334c4c5c0ba232e1e7567cc8fe92b4a-scaled.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/modernhomejournals.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/07\\\/0334c4c5c0ba232e1e7567cc8fe92b4a-scaled.jpg\",\"width\":2560,\"height\":1707,\"caption\":\"UNITED STATES - FEBRUARY 3: The seal of the Department of Homeland Security is seen as members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Congressional Black Caucus, Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, and other caucuses, conduct a rally to call for the firing of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, outside Immigration and Customs Enforcement headquarters on Tuesday, February 3, 2026. 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