23rd June 2026 – (Washington) A federal judge in Washington, D.C. has ruled unlawful a Trump administration database containing sensitive personal information on American citizens, ordering it to be dismantled after several states relied on it to remove eligible voters from electoral rolls.
In her decision issued on Monday, District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan said the federal government had “knowingly” infringed citizens’ privacy in a way that jeopardised the fundamental right to vote. She stated that the court could not ignore actions that undermine both privacy protections and electoral participation.
The case arose from a lawsuit filed in September by a coalition of voting‑rights and privacy groups led by the League of Women Voters. The challenge focused on changes made to the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system, which is operated by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to confirm citizenship and immigration status.
According to the ruling, federal agencies moved swiftly to implement Executive Order 14248, signed by former President Donald Trump in March 2025. The order sought to overhaul aspects of the US electoral system by requiring documentary proof of citizenship for voter registration in federal elections. It directed agencies including DHS and the Social Security Administration to establish mechanisms enabling state and local authorities to verify the citizenship status of registered voters and applicants.
Judge Sooknanan found that, in attempting to comply with the executive order, agencies “haphazardly” merged and repurposed personal data belonging to millions of Americans, including citizenship information they were aware could be unreliable. She noted that several states subsequently accessed the database and began removing individuals from voter rolls based on inaccurate records.
The judge emphasised that the litigation engaged two core constitutional protections: the right to privacy and the right to vote. She concluded that the creation and use of the database represented an overreach of federal authority.
In a statement released after the ruling, the League of Women Voters welcomed the decision, describing the database as a vast repository of sensitive and legally protected personal data. The organisation argued that its existence exposed citizens to unwarranted scrutiny and the risk of being improperly struck from voter registers.