Six conservative justices handed President Trump his citizenship database back on Friday morning, six weeks before Election Day, over the dissent of the court's three liberals.
The unsigned order revives SAVE, the Homeland Security system that now runs state voter rolls against Social Security records. A federal judge found it illegal in June. It has already flagged American citizens as noncitizens. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in dissent that burdening or disenfranchising "even a few lawful voters outweighs the nonexistent harm" the government suffers when it is stopped from doing something it "likely lacks the authority" to do, CBS News and NBC News reported.
Eleven days earlier the same court refused Trump's bid to restrict mail-ballot procedures in a separate case, Postal Service v. California. Trump lost the mail ballots and got the list.
Federal law obliges the government to answer state and local election officials who ask it to verify a voter's citizenship, the court wrote, and the same law's ban on mass purges near an election "limits the potential impact" this year, NBC reported.
Judge Sparkle Sooknanan saw it differently in June. She ruled that Homeland Security broke the Social Security Act, the Privacy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act when it rebuilt SAVE last year, wired it to Social Security numbers for the first time and invited states to upload entire voter rolls. The government "has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote," she wrote. An appeals panel voted 2-1 to leave her ruling in place, NPR reported.
