A federal appeals court refused to allow the federal government to revive its recently overhauled citizenship database after a lower court had ruled the changes violated privacy laws earlier this summer.
At the heart of the case is a tangled legal process over the government’s overhaul of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, database. It was originally intended to track the status of immigrants in the country but was revamped after a March 2025 executive order aimed at rooting out potential noncitizen voters.
Expanding the database by adding personal data and new features prompted a lawsuit in D.C. over concerns that the Social Security number search feature constituted a privacy violation — amid broader concerns that the database could have inaccuracies that would lead to American citizens being erroneously flagged as ineligible to vote. But it also prompted four states to file a separate lawsuit, in which another federal judge in Florida ruled the government had to reinstate those very features for their use.
Late Friday, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 against the Department of Homeland Security, saying the department had not properly made its argument to defend use of the SAVE database. The modified system is still disabled nationally as a result.
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The panel said they were denying the government’s motion based on forfeiture, rather than whether the department had violated the Social Security Act, because DHS’s new argument leaned on the Florida ruling, which was issued just a day before the judge in D.C. rejected it.
“Only after the district court had already granted summary judgment for plaintiffs did the government raise what are now its central arguments regarding plaintiffs’ Social Security Act claim,” the judges wrote, saying the government had sought a stay based on forfeited arguments, or issues they had failed to raise in time.
“At any rate, even considering the forfeited arguments as they are presented in the necessarily constrained context of an expedited stay motion, we cannot conclude that the government has made the requisite strong showing of a likelihood of success,” they continued in their denial.
The cases represent the complexities behind implementing President Donald Trump’s aggressive — and often legislatively fallible — push to cut down on noncitizen voting, which is already an extremely rare occurrence. The higher court’s Friday ruling marked yet another defeat for the administration, which is also dealing with legal battles over a U.S. Postal Service rule to tamp down mail-in voting ahead of the Nov. 3 midterms, as well as a so-far-unsuccessful attempt to obtain copies of states’ voter rolls.
As for the Florida case — in which Florida, Iowa, Ohio and Indiana sought to restore access to the features in question as part of a separate DHS settlement agreement — the appeals court downplayed that the two cases presented “conflicting legal determinations” at all. The 11th Circuit appeal of that order is still pending.
The panel’s Friday decision allows for a merits panel to reconsider DHS’s forfeited arguments. The federal government also has the option to appeal to the Supreme Court.
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