On Friday, the Supreme Court paused a lower-court judge’s ruling preventing the Trump Administration from utilizing its modified centralized database system to verify the citizenship of potential voters in the upcoming elections on November 3.
On June 22, U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan instituted the ban and agreed with a case’s legal challenges claiming that use of the system would violate federal laws.
The Supreme Court lifted the ban until the case works its way to conclusion through the nation’s court system. The majority opinion bases the High Court’s ruling on the following grounds:
- The lower court’s order “inhibits the Federal Government’s efforts to assist state and local agencies in the proper administration of the midterm elections.”
- The challengers are not likely to prevail on the merits of their claims.
- The use of the database system does not violate the Social Security Act, the Privacy Act, and the federal law governing administrative agencies.
- A 1996 federal immigration law is evidence that Congress has “expressly authorized DHS to request and receive information relating to citizenship and immigration status from other agencies, including SSA.”
- The Supreme Court has “often granted” review of similar bans when “a lower court has set aside an important federal program.”
- The federal government would suffer permanent harm, if the district court’s order remained in place.
“[T]he Federal Government has an obligation to respond to requests from state and local election officials seeking to verify the citizenship of voters,” the majority opinion explains. “[Judge Sooknanan’s] order below prevents the Federal Government from using the program it believes is best suited to the task.”
However, the Supreme Court determined that the plaintiffs do, indeed, have standing to continue their legal challenge to the use of the database. In the meantime, the database system can be used to distinguish between those who are, and aren’t, eligible to vote.
The case stems from opposition to President Donald Trump’s efforts to prevent people who are ineligible to vote from casting ballots, as SCOTUSblog explains:
“The dispute dates back to late March, when President Donald Trump issued an executive order that (among other things) directed the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to set up systems that would permit state and local governments to verify voters’ citizenship and immigration status. Those agencies then modified the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database, known as the SAVE system, to include the records of U.S.-born citizens, to give it access to Social Security numbers, and to allow users to conduct multiple searches simultaneously.”
Two weeks after Judge Sooknanan issued her ban, Rep. Abe Hamadeh (R-AZ) introduced a resolution to remove her from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia for abuse of her judicial authority.
Rep. Hamadeh alleges that Sooknanan abused the power entrusted to her when she issued an injunction that halted President Trump’s SAVE program, "substituting the judgment of a single unelected judge for that of the duly elected Executive Branch."
"Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan’s egregious overreaching ruling blocking President Trump’s common-sense effort to verify the citizenship of those who want to vote in our elections was the final straw," Hamadeh said:
"This is a blatant and unlawful subversion of the President’s executive authority and a direct assault on election integrity.
"Judges who weaponize their bench to interfere with the President’s constitutional duties must be held accountable."
The articles of impeachment are stalled in committee.
