Supreme Court stays order blocking expanded SAVE voter checks

On Sept. 25, 2026, the Supreme Court stayed Judge Sparkle Sooknanan's June 22 order setting aside the modified SAVE program in Department of Homeland Security v. League of Women Voters, No. 26A308. The stay lasts through the D.C. Circuit appeal and any timely Supreme Court review. It changes what DHS is legally permitted to do while the case continues; it is not a final decision on the program's lawfulness.

USCIS launched the modified system by May 22, 2025. It added records for U.S.-born citizens, access to Social Security Administration records including Social Security numbers, and a file-upload process that creates individual SAVE cases for multiple people. Sooknanan later held that the changes violated the Social Security Act, the Privacy Act and administrative law. A divided D.C. Circuit panel denied a stay on Sept. 4 before the Supreme Court intervened.

In an unsigned opinion, the Supreme Court majority said the challengers likely have standing but that "their claims likely lack merit." It read 8 U.S.C. § 1373 as likely authorizing DHS to obtain citizenship information despite restrictions elsewhere in federal law, and cited the government's interest in "the proper administration of the midterm elections." Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, dissented. She objected that the Court acted "without full briefing or oral argument" while "disregarding the harms that the modified SAVE system has caused, and will likely continue to cause, to lawful voters."

The litigation had already produced conflicting operational orders. The government said it disabled modified SAVE nationwide after Sooknanan's ruling. Judge T. Kent Wetherell II then ordered DHS to restore bulk-upload and Social Security-number searches for Florida, Indiana, Iowa and Ohio under a November 2025 settlement. In its Sept. 8 application, the government said it had restored the affected features for those four states while keeping them disabled for everyone else.

A USCIS notice last reviewed or updated Oct. 2 resolved the remaining operational question. It says SAVE user agencies "can once again create SAVE cases using a full or partial Social Security number and the SAVE bulk upload tool." USCIS attributes the restoration to the Supreme Court's Sept. 25 stay. The appeal remains pending, and the stay is not a final ruling on whether the modified system is lawful.

How we know: Supreme Court opinion, government stay application, lower-court record, DHS program documents, Oct. 2 appellate filing and USCIS's Oct. 2 restoration notice read directly. The stay permits nationwide use while the appeal continues, but it is not a final ruling on the merits. USCIS confirms that SAVE user agencies can again create cases with full or partial Social Security numbers and use bulk upload.