Supreme Court allows Trump admin to use citizenship database ahead of midterms

The Supreme Court has cleared the Trump administration to use a federal citizenship database to verify voters ahead of the midterm elections.

Ruling 6-3 along ideological lines, the justices lifted a lower court order that had blocked the Department of Homeland Security from expanding the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system, a 40-year-old immigration database, to help states screen voter records for noncitizens. In an unsigned opinion, the majority found that Congress authorized such an information-sharing arrangement under the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, and that the lower court's order hampered federal efforts to help states run the midterms.

The ruling's reach is limited for now. The National Voter Registration Act bars states from purging voters within 90 days of an election, so DHS can only conduct individualized checks rather than the bulk searches the system was built for.

Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissented, arguing the majority misread the immigration law to override privacy limits on sharing citizenship data with DHS. Jackson wrote that burdening or disenfranchising even a few lawful voters outweighs any harm to the government from being blocked. The dissent predicted the ruling would have minimal short-term impact.