Key Points

  • The Supreme Court stayed the district court's vacatur of the modified SAVE program, allowing the government to resume using SSA citizenship data for voter verification.
  • The majority held that IIRIRA's 'notwithstanding' clauses in 8 U.S.C. § 1373(a) and (b) likely authorize DHS to request and receive citizenship information from SSA despite restrictions in the Social Security Act and Privacy Act.
  • Justice Jackson, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Kagan, dissented, arguing the statutory provisions do not affirmatively grant disclosure authority and that the majority misused its equitable powers.
  • The stay permits only individualized inquiries before the midterms, as the NVRA's 90-day moratorium bars systematic voter-roll maintenance.
  • The Court noted it will address a related question about the NVRA moratorium's scope in RNC v. Mi Familia Vota.

The Supreme Court on Friday stayed a lower court order that had shut down the federal government's expanded voter-citizenship verification program, ruling that two 1996 immigration-law provisions likely authorize the Social Security Administration to share sensitive records with the Department of Homeland Security despite statutory restrictions. The unsigned order, issued over a dissent by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, comes just weeks before the November midterm elections.

The stay revives the modified Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program, or SAVE, which the Trump administration launched in May 2025 under an executive order directing DHS to help states verify voter citizenship. The expanded system, unlike its predecessor, incorporates bulk queries against SSA's NUMIDENT database, which contains Social Security numbers, birth dates, places of birth, and citizenship indicators for every person who has received an SSN—including natural-born citizens.

The League of Women Voters, its affiliates, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center sued, arguing the modifications violated the Social Security Act's confidentiality provision, the Privacy Act's notice-and-comment requirements, and the Administrative Procedure Act. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia agreed and vacated the modified program in June 2026. A divided D.C. Circuit panel—Chief Judge Srinivasan and Judge Wilkins in the majority, with Judge Katsas dissenting—denied the government's request for a stay pending appeal.

In its per curiam opinion, the Court held that plaintiffs likely have standing to sue. One member, identified as J. Doe 4, is registered to vote in Louisiana and demonstrated that SSA records do not accurately reflect her naturalized citizenship. Such a "need to take . . . affirmative steps to avoid risk of harm . . . constitutes a cognizable injury," the Court wrote, citing Meese v. Keene.

But the majority found the plaintiffs' claims "likely lack merit" because the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, or IIRIRA, "separately and expressly authorized DHS to request and receive information relating to citizenship and immigration status from other agencies, including SSA."

The majority rested its analysis on two provisions of 8 U.S.C. § 1373. Section 1373(a) provides that "[n]otwithstanding 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, or receiving from, the [DHS] information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual." Section 1373(b), captioned "Additional authority of government entities," uses nearly identical language.

"By prohibiting interference with the disclosure of information regarding citizenship status to DHS—'[n]otwithstanding any other provision of Federal, State, or local law'—Congress necessarily authorized DHS to request and receive that information," the majority wrote. "Otherwise, agencies, entities, and officials could find themselves in the impossible predicament of either disclosing information consistent with section 1373 but in violation of legislation like the Social Security Act and Privacy Act or withholding that information consistent with those Acts but in violation of section 1373."

The majority added that Section 1373(c), which requires DHS to respond to state and local inquiries "seeking to verify or ascertain the citizenship or immigration status of any individual," appears to contemplate "an information-sharing regime like the modified SAVE program."

Justice Jackson's dissent accused the majority of reaching its conclusion "without full briefing or oral argument" on statutory provisions the Court "has never before interpreted." She wrote that the majority "misuses its equitable powers" by focusing solely on the government's claimed harm while "disregarding the harms that the modified SAVE system has caused, and will likely continue to cause, to lawful voters."

On the statutory question, Jackson argued the majority "misreads the statutory text." Sections 1373(a) and (b), she wrote, "do not affirmatively grant any power. Nor do they override any explicit statutory limits on information-sharing." Rather, the provisions bar government entities from interfering with otherwise lawful exchanges—a different proposition. "When a law imposes an express restriction on disclosure, it is that law—not an 'entity,' 'official,' 'person,' or 'agency'—that is doing the 'prohibit[ing]' or 'restrict[ing],'" Jackson wrote. "Neither § 1373(a) nor (b) has anything to say in that circumstance."

The majority responded in a footnote that "the distinction the dissent draws between laws and those tasked with enforcing them is illusory." Sections 1373(a) and (b) "prohibit any 'entity,' 'official,' 'person,' or 'agency' from 'prohibit[ing]' or 'in any way restrict[ing]' the request for or receipt of information regarding immigration status," the majority wrote. "Those prohibitions necessarily include invoking a law to deny a request for or transfer of such information."

Jackson also pointed to IIRIRA's legislative history, which she said showed Congress enacted Section 1373 "to respond to a particular problem: state and local agencies refusing to cooperate with federal officials in enforcing immigration laws." And she noted that the Office of Legal Counsel once maintained that § 1373(a) does "not clearly invest governmental officials or entities with the affirmative authority to disclose information in circumstances where they otherwise would be prohibited from doing so by a federal statute."

On the equities, the majority acknowledged that the National Voter Registration Act prohibits states from systematically removing voters from their rolls during the 90 days before a federal election. But the Court found that the order below "prevents the Federal Government from using the modified SAVE program to conduct individualized inquiries, which are permitted under federal law during this period." The majority concluded that "the District Court's order thus inhibits the Federal Government's efforts to assist state and local agencies in the proper administration of the midterm elections."

Jackson countered that the majority's balancing was "the judicial equivalent of expecting a seesaw with weight applied on only one side to work properly." She cited the district court's findings that in Texas, one plaintiff member "had her voter registration revoked without her knowledge," and two more "had to provide proof of citizenship to maintain registered voter status." The government's harm, Jackson wrote, "is substantially mitigated by its ability to use the pre-2025 version of SAVE."

Jackson also rejected the premise that the government suffers cognizable injury when prevented from using an unlawful program. "It cannot be that the Government is 'injured whenever [it] is prevented from' violating the law," she wrote, quoting her own earlier dissent in Trump v. Orr.

The stay will remain in effect pending the D.C. Circuit's disposition of the government's appeal and any subsequent petition for certiorari. If certiorari is denied, the stay terminates automatically; if granted, the stay continues until the Court issues its judgment.

The Court flagged a related case, Republican National Committee v. Mi Familia Vota, No. 25-1017, which presents the question whether the NVRA prohibits states from implementing programs within 90 days of federal elections to cancel registrations of voters who are not citizens. "The parties in this case do not ask us to address that question and have not briefed it, and we do not need to decide it here," the majority wrote.