Federal judge questions legality of changes to SAVE database for checking voter citizenship

A federal judge on Monday declined to order the federal government to undo its overhaul of SAVE, a database that some states are using to check voters’ citizenship status, but said she doubted the legality of the government’s changes.

SAVE, which is operated by the Department of Homeland Security, was typically used by states to check residents’ eligibility for public benefits. But the changes the Trump administration introduced in April made SAVE easier to use for screening voters’ citizenship, allowing state election officials to upload voter registration records for verification in bulk, instead of one by one, and search by Social Security number.

The League of Women Voters and other plaintiffs in the case claimed that the changes made SAVE less accurate and were illegal, and asked the court for a temporary order that the database revert to how it operated before the overhaul.

Judge Sparkle Sooknanan, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, declined to issue the stay, saying the league failed to show that the changes caused irreparable injury. But she called for expedited proceedings to rule on the plaintiffs’ claim that the changes are illegal, given the “rapid ongoing developments and serious issues at stake.”



https://www.votebeat.org/2025/11/17/judge-declined-stay-reversing-save-database-changes/