States may cross-check voter data for the 2026 election against a federal citizenship database, the U.S. Supreme Court said Friday in an emergency ruling (DHS v. League of Women Voters). According to federal law, the court said, “the Federal Government has an obligation to respond to requests from state and local election officials seeking to verify the citizenship of voters.” The brief order was unsigned, but the three progressive judges publicly dissented.

Last March, President Trump expanded the scope of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, which since 1986 “has allowed federal, state, and local government agencies to verify the citizenship and immigration status of noncitizens applying for public benefits,” the court summarized. The expansion would “allow state and local authorities to verify the citizenship status of registered voters and individuals registering to vote,” as well as allowing the Department of Homeland Security to access Social Security records for the purpose.

As with any action taken by the Trump administration, this one faced an inevitable left-wing lawsuit. “Various organizations — including the League of Women Voters, its local affiliates, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center — sued DHS, SSA, and other federal actors to challenge the modified SAVE program,” the court narrated. The suit alleged that the program expansion violated a confidentiality provision of the Social Security Act, violated provisions of the Privacy Act of 1974, and were “arbitrary and capricious.”

The challengers prevailed in federal district court and at the appellate court, but in Friday’s ruling the Supreme Court paused the preliminary injunction, finding that the government was likely to prevail on the merits.

Their reasoning turned on two “notwithstanding” clauses in the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) of 1996. First, “Notwithstanding any other provision of Federal, State, or local law, a Federal, State, or local government entity or official may not prohibit, or in any way restrict, any government entity or official from sending to … the [DHS] information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual.”

In other words, the IIRIRA overrides the privacy and confidentiality concerns of earlier laws for the specific purpose of verifying citizenship.

The DHS was not created until 2002, in the wake of 9/11. This explains why the Supreme Court put “DHS” in brackets. The original law references “the Immigration and Naturalization Service,” which has now become a part of DHS.

Second, “Notwithstanding any other provision of Federal, State, or local law, no person or agency may prohibit, or in any way restrict, a Federal, State, or local government entity from doing any of the following with respect to information regarding the immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual.” As the court noted, “The ‘following’ activities include ‘[s]ending such information to, or requesting or receiving such information from, the [DHS].’”

In other words, no previous law could prevent states from asking for and receiving citizenship information from the DHS.

Finally, the court added, “lest there be any doubt,” the next section of the law “requires DHS to respond to inquiries from state and local agencies ‘seeking to verify or ascertain the citizenship or immigration status of any individual.’”

For these reasons, it concluded, the Trump administration was well withing its rights to create a database for states to reference with citizenship inquiries regarding their voter rolls.

Thus, the Supreme Court’s ruling amounts to a conditional win on the merits for the Trump administration — but not a far-reaching one. The court only considered the case on an emergency basis, which means the litigation may drag on for years longer in the federal court system.

Additionally, with only weeks left until the November election, the utility of this decision for the 2026 midterms faces significant limitations. First, DHS cannot compel states to cross-check their voter data against the SAVE database; its use is entirely voluntary. Unsurprisingly, the states most allergic to election integrity have sneezed at this database too.

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (D) declared that the ruling will not affect her state because it “does not force states to change the way we run our elections.”

Many states that want to use the DHS’s SAVE database are prohibited by law from systematically purging their voter rolls within 90 days of an election. They may be able to reference the database on a case-by-case basis, but this will prevent any comprehensive voter security in this election.

Furthermore, the SAVE database is not perfectly up to date. One plaintiff in the lawsuit “is registered to vote in a State (Louisiana) that used the modified SAVE program,” the court recorded, and “demonstrated that SSA [Social Security Administration] records do not accurately reflect that she is now a naturalized citizen.”

For such (likely marginal) cases, a state using the database might result in U.S. citizens having to put in extra work to prove their citizenship. The court made this observation to establish that the challengers had standing, but they ultimately sided with the government on the merits regardless.

For its part, the Trump administration is flabbergasted that the program wound up before the Supreme Court at all. “Yes, you read that right,” DHS General Counsel James Percival said on X. “We had to file an emergency petition in the Supreme Court just so we could use government data to help states stop noncitizens from illegally voting.”