The case, seeking to help officials ensure potential voters are citizens, is one of multiple voting cases the court is considering less than two months before the midterms.
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The Trump administration on Tuesday asked the Supreme Court to let it use a wide-ranging government database that includes Social Security information to help state officials verify whether would-be voters are U.S. citizens.
The case is one of a growing number of election-related cases that the justices are being asked to decide less than two months before the critical Nov. 3 midterms. It involves the legality of a federal database that the Trump administration has expanded to include Social Security data and information on natural-born citizens, which state election officials would be able to use in broad searches to verify their voter rolls.
President Donald Trump directed the creation of the system in a March 2025 executive order that he said was designed to “protect the integrity of our election process.”
In June, a federal judge in D.C. blocked the use of the database, finding in a 75-page opinion that the new database was unlawful. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan, appointed by President Joe Biden, wrote that the administration had “haphazardly combined and repurposed the private information of millions of Americans, including citizenship data that they knew to be unreliable.”
She added, “Since then, states have partnered with the federal government to access the database and are actively removing United States citizens from voter rolls based on inaccurate information.” The order violated privacy protections built into the Social Security Act and other laws, Sooknanan wrote.
A D.C. appeals court panel last week declined to pause the judge’s ruling, prompting the Trump administration to ask the Supreme Court to let it continue using the database.
In its application to the high court on Tuesday, Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that Sooknanan’s order was “indefensible” and “threatens the integrity of upcoming elections.”
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The order, Sauer wrote, deprives “the government of an effective tool to verify the eligibility of registered voters and benefits applicants under various state and federal programs.”
The justices asked the plaintiffs, led by the League of Women Voters, to respond to the government’s claims by Tuesday, Sept. 15. The Supreme Court could rule shortly thereafter.
The administration’s new system would expand an existing database maintained by the Department of Homeland Security, called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE). State and local officials have used the system to verify a person’s citizenship before handing out licenses and benefits, and also sometimes to verify voter eligibility. But the system was limited, without information on natural-born citizens.
In May 2025, the Trump administration significantly expanded the database to include information from the Social Security Administration as well as records on “U.S. citizens by birth.”
The plaintiffs, some of whom are immigrants who have obtained U.S. citizenship, allege that the system can misidentify citizens as noncitizens. They have stated in sworn declarations that the Social Security Administration continues to list them as noncitizens, which they say could wrongly disqualify them from voting.
In a separate case, the Supreme Court is also considering whether the Trump administration can move forward with restrictions on mail-in voting. Nearly a third of voters used mail-in ballots in 2024, and the last-minute changes may result in uncounted ballots, The Washington Post has reported.
