Judge Rules Justice Department's Use of State Voter Rolls Was Unlawful
A federal judge ruled on Oct. 9, 2026, that the Justice Department acted unlawfully when it sought state voter rolls to cross-check against a federal immigration database. In a 78-page decision, U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan sided with watchdog group Common Cause and rejected the department's voter-list maintenance theory, the claim it needed the lists to keep registration records accurate. Reuters
The department had demanded unredacted voter rolls from nearly all 50 states, including sensitive personal information. Eighteen states, mostly Republican-led, complied. After other states refused, the department sued 30 states and Washington, D.C., over the refusals. Twenty-six of those voter-data lawsuits have been dismissed. Al Jazeera
Officials then compared the voter data they obtained against SAVE, the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database, a federal system for checking immigration status. People identified as noncitizens were flagged for potential removal from voter rolls. List maintenance and removal decisions turned on that database match.
Sooknanan found the administration understated the risk of wrongly removing eligible citizens because SAVE can be inaccurate. She said it can hold outdated citizenship records and potentially misidentify naturalized U.S. citizens as noncitizens. The department says it is reviewing the ruling. On authority, Sooknanan wrote the policy was the federal government's attempt to decide who gets to vote, adding Congress left that authority to the states. Federal law bars systematic voter-roll purges in the 90 days before a federal election, a quiet period that limits large cleanups close to Election Day.
The Oct. 9 ruling followed an earlier step. In June, Sooknanan blocked expanded use of SAVE for voter-roll checks. The U.S. Supreme Court temporarily paused that order and restored the mass voter verification system. The Justice Department had called the June blocking order indefensible. Reuters
SAVE itself is not new. Federal, state and local agencies have used it since 1986. The Supreme Court filing on its expanded election use is docketed as No. 26A308, Department of Homeland Security v. League of —. U.S. Supreme Court
The broader context here is federalism applied to election administration. Sooknanan drew a line between federal access to immigration-status data and federal direction of who remains on state rolls. That distinction will matter for any future plan that pairs bulk state voter files with federal checks, particularly where match criteria and notice and cure procedures decide whether an eligible registrant stays registered.
Looking at what this means for litigators and administrators, two pressure points stand out. The first is error rate. If naturalization updates lag in SAVE, a match-and-flag system risks false positives that remove eligible voters. The second is remedy. With most suits against noncompliant states dismissed and with a full merits ruling on unlawfulness, the department faces a choice between appeal, revised guidance with narrower requests, or state-by-state negotiation under existing list-maintenance laws.
