DHS asks SCOTUS to restore SAVE tool for midterm elections — SkimNews
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- Solicitor General D. John Sauer urged the Supreme Court to restore the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system, calling a lower-court order blocking it 'indefensible' and saying it 'threatens the integrity of upcoming elections.'
- DHS overhauled SAVE at President Trump's direction so election officials could verify voters' citizenship, linking the database to Social Security records and enabling bulk queries.
- The modified system now processes more than a million requests per day, according to Sauer, who said it makes voter registration eligibility checks more efficient.
- The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit voted 2-1 on Friday to uphold a block on the overhaul after a judge found it violated the Social Security Act and a federal privacy law.
- SAVE is normally used to determine eligibility for certain federal programs, not just elections, making the citizenship-verification expansion the focal dispute.
- The case is the latest election-related dispute to land on the Supreme Court's emergency docket as the midterm countdown continues, with justices separately weighing a GOP-favored congressional map.
Why it matters: With the D.C. Circuit's 2-1 ruling against the overhaul on the books and midweeks to November ticking down, the administration is now betting on SCOTUS's emergency docket to revive a citizenship-verification pipeline processing over one million daily queries before voters head to the polls.
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