Two federal judges have issued conflicting rulings over the Trump administration’s use of a federal immigration database to help states check voter rolls for potentially illegal voters, creating a legal clash over whether purported privacy concerns can override state access to federal citizenship records.U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan, an appointee of former President Joe Biden in Washington, D.C., blocked the modified SAVE system nationwide on June 22 after voting rights and privacy groups argued the overhaul unlawfully exposed Social Security information and risked wrongly flagging eligible voters as noncitizens.
But U.S. District Judge T. Kent Wetherell II, an appointee of President Donald Trump in Pensacola, Florida, ordered the Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday to restore access for Florida, Ohio, Iowa, and Indiana, finding that DHS violated a settlement agreement with those states when it disabled key SAVE features to comply with Sooknanan’s ruling.“The fact that Defendants disabled those features to comply with Judge Sooknanan’s order does not change the fact that they violated the agreement,” Wetherell wrote.The Florida case began when Florida sued the Biden-era DHS in 2024, accusing the department of failing to respond adequately to state requests for citizenship verification. After Trump returned to office, DHS settled with Florida and three other Republican-led states, agreeing to maintain improved SAVE features, including bulk searches and Social Security number-based checks.The Washington, D.C., case was brought separately by voting rights and privacy advocates challenging those same SAVE changes under the Privacy Act, the Social Security Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act.Abhishek Kambli, a partner with Holtzman Vogel who recently departed the Justice Department‘s Civil Rights Division, argued that sequence is critical because Sooknanan’s decision came after the Florida settlement had already been entered.Kambli noted that Sooknanan’s remedy was vacatur under the APA, meaning the agency action was set aside, rather than a permanent injunction directly barring DHS from operating SAVE. He argued that her ruling could not wipe out the Florida settlement agreement, which Wetherell has now ordered DHS to enforce. Other conservative critics accused Sooknanan of overstepping her authority by attempting to stop the federal government from using its databases.
