DHS relaunches voter purge database in 4 red states

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) assured a judge in Washington, D.C., that it was shuttering a controversial citizenship database, but would make the tool available to four Republican-led states on a different judge’s orders.

The paradoxical situation emerged after both federal judges issued contradictory rulings on the database, which critics say is ill-suited for voter verification and prone to flagging U.S. citizens as potential noncitizens. 

In a joint status report filed Friday night, DHS’s lawyers said they were complying with District Court Judge Sparkle Sooknanan’s ruling shutting down the Systematic Alien Verification for Eligibility (SAVE) database, which was initially created to determine eligibility for federal public benefits. In his March 2025 executive order, President Donald Trump directed DHS to incorporate Social Security Administration (SSA) data into SAVE and allow state election officials to run registration records through it in bulk.

That violated federal privacy and administrative laws, Sooknanan held in June. 

But a few weeks later, a federal judge in Florida found that a settlement agreement that DHS entered into with Florida, Ohio, Iowa and Indiana in November 2025 required the agency to continue to make the modified SAVE system available to those states for voter record citizenship audits.

The federal government said Friday that it was trying to simultaneously comply with the two conflicting orders “to the greatest extent possible.”

As a result, DHS and SSA “are in the process of providing a technical workaround that would allow for bulk-uploads and SSN searches for the State of Florida, Ohio, Iowa, and Indiana—even while those capabilities remain disabled for all other users,” DHS’s attorneys wrote. In emails attached to the filing, DHS attorneys say the states’ access has already been restored.

The plaintiffs in that case — the League of Women Voters, Democracy Forward, the Fair Elections Center and the Electronic Privacy Information Center — asked Sooknanan to issue a new court order blocking the four states’ carve-out.

Instead, Sooknanan directed the plaintiffs and federal defendants to attempt to settle the matter between themselves by the end of Monday. If they are unable — which seems likely — the two sides will file briefs ahead of a July 20 hearing. Sooknanan, a Joe Biden appointee, also ordered SSA to explain its position on whether it is bound by her court order or the Florida order. 

DHS appealed Sooknanan’s order, but not the Florida ruling issued by District Court Judge T. Kent Wetherell II. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit could issue a ruling there as early as July 20. Last week, Sooknanan rejected DHS’s request to temporarily pause her injunction while the appeals are heard in an opinion that ripped into Wetherell, a Trump appointee. 

Federal district court judges are not bound by their peers’ decisions. And even if the voting rights groups defeat DHS’s appeals in D.C. Circuit Court, that ruling would not bind Wetherell down in Florida.

The issue will likely remain unresolved until at least one of the circuit courts rules specifically on the conflicting orders. Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court could take up the question, perhaps in an emergency petition for review on the so-called shadow docket.