A federal appeals court has left in place a ban on the Trump administration’s use of citizenship data to check US voter rolls, dealing a setback to its efforts to identify alleged non-citizens registered to vote ahead of November’s midterm elections.
The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected the administration’s request for an emergency stay in a 2-1 decision issued on Friday. The ruling means the Department of Homeland Security’s expanded Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system cannot be restored while the wider legal challenge continues.
Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan and Judge Robert Wilkins said the administration had not shown that it was likely to succeed in overturning a lower court’s decision. Judge Gregory Katsas, who was appointed by Donald Trump, dissented and said the system should be reinstated during the appeal.
The lower court ruled in June that the modified SAVE programme breached the Social Security Act and the Privacy Act. It ordered the system to be set aside after finding that the government had not established sufficient legal authority for its new use.
Under changes introduced in 2025, state and local election officials were allowed to submit bulk voter-roll checks using full or partial Social Security numbers. The system could draw on records held by the Social Security Administration and return information about an individual’s citizenship, immigration status, place of birth or whether they were recorded as deceased.
The appeals court said the Social Security Act generally requires Social Security numbers and related records to remain confidential. It concluded that the administration had not made the “strong showing” needed to justify suspending the lower court’s order.
The judges also noted the risk that inaccurate records could lead eligible American citizens to be wrongly flagged as non-citizens and forced to provide further proof of their status. In some cases, voters could face removal from registration lists.
The decision follows a separate ruling by a federal judge in Florida in July ordering the Department of Homeland Security to restore access to the database for four Republican-led states. That order created a conflict with the nationwide ban imposed by the Washington court.
The administration’s appeal against the lower court’s ruling remains pending. The dispute is part of a broader legal battle over the Trump administration’s attempts to expand federal involvement in voter-roll checks before the November 3 midterm elections, when Republicans will defend narrow majorities in both chambers of Congress.
