D.C. Circuit, 2–1, Keeps Overhauled SAVE Citizenship Tool Offline; Katsas Dissents

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit late Friday refused to stay a June district-court judgment that shut down the 2025 overhaul of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system — the DHS tool states had been using to run voter rolls against citizenship and Social Security records. Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan and Judge Robert L. Wilkins, both Obama appointees, formed the majority. Judge Gregory G. Katsas, a Trump appointee, dissented. The order in League of Women Voters v. Department of Homeland Security, No. 26-5243, leaves the upgraded functions offline with less than two months until the Nov. 3 midterms. The majority wrote that “the public interest does not favor interim restoration of a system the government has not made a strong showing it may lawfully operate.”

SAVE was created by Congress in 1986 so agencies could check immigration status for public-benefit eligibility. Before 2025, states could submit only individual queries, and the system could not confirm U.S.-born citizenship or tap Social Security records. After Republican-led states sued over those limits, President Trump’s March 25, 2025, Executive Order 14,248 directed DHS to give election officials access to systems for verifying citizenship of registrants and already-registered voters, and directed the Social Security Administration to make SSN verification, the Death Master File, and other databases available. DHS then added records of natural-born citizens, linked SSA data including Social Security numbers, and allowed bulk uploads and last-four-digit SSN searches. A November 2025 settlement in Florida v. DHS, approved in December, required those bulk and SSN capabilities. Democracy Docket reported that after the June judgment the government disabled bulk upload and SSN search functions. Advocacy groups that sued said some members were flagged as noncitizens and had registrations canceled.

U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan, a Biden appointee, granted the League of Women Voters and co-plaintiffs summary judgment on June 22. She vacated the modified SAVE system and the October 2025 DHS and November 2025 SSA System of Records Notices, holding they violated the Social Security Act’s limits on disclosing SSA records, the Privacy Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act. The government appealed June 25 and sought a stay so states could keep using the upgraded tool pending appeal. The panel denied that stay Friday. Srinivasan and Wilkins concluded the government had not made the required strong showing that it could restore bulk and SSN functions without violating Social Security privacy law. Texas is an appellee-intervenor. A federal judge in Florida later ordered access restored for Florida, Ohio, Iowa, and Indiana, creating conflicting district-court directions while the D.C. Circuit appeal proceeds.

Katsas would have lifted the injunction. His dissent said states have obtained citizenship and immigration data from DHS for benefits and voting for decades and have used SAVE to verify voter citizenship since 2005. “Today, 27 states use SAVE for that purpose,” he wrote. From Jan. 1, 2025, to April 1, 2026, those states made about 60 million voter-verification queries. More than 1,300 federal, state, and local agencies use SAVE, which processed about 25 million queries in fiscal 2024 and 200 million in fiscal 2025. He described the 2025 changes as responses to state lawsuits demanding a workable check when a voter has no DHS immigration number. The stay denial does not decide the merits of the appeal. It keeps the 2025 upgrades offline while the case continues. The dispute is separate from the House-passed SAVE America Act still pending in the Senate. Some states have already begun mailing midterm ballots.