League of Women Voters, EPIC Renew Call for Court to Protect Privacy and Voting Rights in Case Challenging Illegal SAVE Overhaul

EPIC and a coalition of plaintiffs led by the League of Women Voters urged a federal court last week to enter summary judgement in their lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s unlawful consolidation and misuse of citizenship data by the Department of Homeland Security and Social Security Administration. The plaintiffs filed a combined reply supporting their March motion for summary judgement and opposition to DHS’s motion to dismiss. The plaintiffs are represented by counsel from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), Democracy Forward, and Fair Elections Center.

As the plaintiffs explained, DHS’s brief only confirms that the agency has converted the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system into an illegal, harmful, and  unreliable tool for mass voter verification and benefits eligibility checks. Plaintiffs’ members have already demonstrated that they have been (and will continue to be) subjected to widespread privacy violations, falsely identified as “potential non-citizen voters,” forced to provide proof of citizenship, purged from voter rolls, and disenfranchised and barred from voting in elections.

Plaintiffs urged the court to swiftly block DHS’s use of the overhauled SAVE system, which remains at the center of the administration’s ongoing, unlawful efforts to nationalize state elections. Plaintiffs highlighted the administration’s recent executive order lawlessly directing DHS and SSA to create a list of every voting-age American citizen in each state—so-called “State Citizenship Lists.”

This case is one of EPIC’s ongoing efforts to fight the administration’s illegal collection state voter information, misuse of personal information, and attempted creation of national data banks. EPIC recently filed three amicus briefs in the Ninth and Sixth Circuits urging the courts to rebuff the DOJ’s unlawful demand for California’s, Oregon’s, and Michigan’s unredacted voter rolls as part of the administration’s wider voter suppression efforts.

The case, League of Women Voters v. DHS, No. 25-03501 (D.D.C.), is brought by the League of Women Voters, the League of Women Voters of Texas, the League of Women Voters of Louisiana, the League of Women Voters of Louisiana and League of Women Voters Louisiana Education Fund, the League of Women Voters of Virginia, and EPIC.