June 22, 2026
A federal judge just put a big ol’ roadblock in President Trump’s way as he tries to change the rules ahead of the upcoming midterm elections. In this 75-page ruling, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., said, “The federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote. This Court cannot stand idly by while that happens.”
Now, this is going to get confusing for a second, but it’s important you understand what is going on. Stick with me because it’s all going to make sense. Do you remember when DOGE was around and remember how they were going into every government agency to root out “waste, fraud and abuse?” And lots of people were like, “Mmm…what’s really going on? What are they really up to?” Well, according to this federal judge today, DOGE was doing a lot more than we thought.
And it all stems from this executive order President Trump signed in March of 2025. In that order, Trump instructed DOGE and the Department of Homeland Security to consolidate Social Security data—including identifying information like your Social Security number, name, birthday and address—with federal immigration databases, including the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE system, to create a federal searchable list of American citizens who would be eligible to vote.
Well, last September, several voting rights groups sued, saying, “Waaaaait a minute. Neither DOGE nor DHS has the authority to overhaul these federal databases, nor do they have the authority to share that sensitive data between government agencies, nor do they have the power to allow the states to tap into these databases. And to make it worse, they did it in ‘secret’ without putting out notice to the public or to Congress, even though that’s specifically required by law.”
Well, in his ruling today, the federal judge said the Trump administration created that database anyway, and then some states, including Texas, tapped into what’s now being called the modified SAVE system to cross-reference their own voter rolls. But to no one’s surprise, that modified SAVE database has tons of errors. It’s just not set up to do what the president, DOGE and DHS want it to do.
And in his ruling today, the judge said the federal government knows it’s flawed and is still trying to force all states to use it anyway. The judge’s ruling says several of the plaintiffs in this case had their voter registrations canceled in their states because that database wrongly identified them as non-citizens.
In fact, the state of Texas admitted in court that when they tapped this modified SAVE database and cross-referenced their voter rolls, they ultimately discovered that 25 percent of the non-citizen matches they found in just one Texas county were actually already American citizens who had proven their citizenship to the state.
A 25 percent error rate. That’s a lot. And that’s in just one county.
The state and the federal government tried to downplay that error rate as not a big deal, but the judge said in his ruling today that not only is it a big deal, but falsely labeling people as non-citizens amounts to defamation.
Besides the errors in the modified SAVE database, the judge says it’s unlawful for several reasons. One, it violates the Social Security Act, which specifically prohibits the disclosure of Social Security numbers and other Social Security Administration records. Two, it violates several provisions of the Privacy Act, including the one that prohibits the federal government from disclosing private information it has on all of us, even between departments. And three, it violates several provisions of the Administrative Procedure Act.
Now, I don’t want to confuse you, but today’s ruling is much bigger than just this case. And that’s because this modified SAVE database is critical to President Trump’s most recent executive order that has to do with mail-in and absentee ballots.
That order from March of this year says states and the United States Postal Service are supposed to tap into that same modified SAVE database to determine which voters are eligible to receive and send a mail-in ballot.
But now that this judge shut that system down, it’s unclear if that can still happen. It’s very likely the Trump administration is going to appeal this ruling.
Read the judge’s ruling here.
Read more from the League of Women Voters here.
See the full docket here.
