PRESS RELEASE: Federal Court Rejects Trump-Vance Administration’s Bid to Pause Ruling Blocking Unlawful SAVE System

Recent Actions in the Case Demonstrate that the Trump-Vance Administration Continues to Invade Privacy and Suppress Voting Rights

Washington, D.C. — A federal court has rejected the Trump-Vance administration’s request to pause a landmark ruling blocking its unlawful expansion of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, allowing the decision to remain in effect while the case proceeds.

In the most recent decision, issued July 8, the court calls the government’s claims of harms “manufactured,” says that the government’s arguments “mischaracterized” the court’s prior conclusions, and says the government is “somewhat audaciously” trying to avoid the court’s order by invoking an inapplicable order from a court in Florida. 

The lawsuit, brought by EPIC, the League of Women Voters, League of Women Voters of Virginia, League of Women Voters of Louisiana, and individual voters, challenges the administration’s expansion of SAVE to allow states to conduct bulk voter verification searches using Social Security information and other sensitive personal data, with frequently inaccurate results that have caused American citizens’ voter registrations to be wrongfully cancelled. Plaintiffs are represented by Democracy Forward, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), and Fair Elections Center.

On June 22, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment, ruling that the administration’s expansion of SAVE is unlawful, violating the Social Security Act, Privacy Act, and Administrative Procedure Act.

The latest developments arise in part from a separate lawsuit filed by the State of Florida and several other states in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida. State of Florida and Florida Department of State, et al. v. DHSchallenged the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) over the functionality of the SAVE system and was resolved through a settlement agreement requiring DHS to maintain the new SAVE capabilities that the plaintiffs in the League of Women Voters case were already litigating in the District of Columbia, including Social Security number searches and bulk upload functionality.

After the D.C. court ruled those SAVE modifications unlawful, DHS disabled those features to comply with the judgment. Florida then won an order requiring enforcement of its settlement agreement, resulting in conflicting district court orders governing operation of the modified SAVE system.

DHS asked the D.C. court to stay its June 22 ruling while it appealed, arguing that the Florida order made compliance impossible. The court rejected that request on Wednesday, finding that DHS created its own predicament by entering into the Florida settlement while litigation challenging the legality of the SAVE expansion was already pending. The D.C. court concluded that the government’s current conflict was the product of its own litigation choices — not a basis for extraordinary relief.

Following the Florida court’s enforcement order, the League of Women Voters and EPIC filed an emergency motion to intervene in the Florida case to defend the D.C. judgment. Meanwhile, DHS has appealed the June 22 decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and is again seeking to stay the D.C. district court’s ruling pending appeal.

“The court rightly rejected the government’s effort to keep its unlawfully bloated SAVE system alive through ‘gamesmanship’ and procedural maneuvering,” said EPIC Deputy Director and Director of Enforcement John Davisson. “The Trump-Vance administration’s ploy to repurpose Americans’ Social Security data and conduct error-ridden mass screenings of voters is exactly the kind of mission creep that federal privacy laws are designed to prevent. The court has made that clear twice now. We will continue fighting to ensure that privacy laws mean what they say and that Americans’ personal information isn’t weaponized against them.”

“The Trump-Vance administration created this crisis by unlawfully expanding the SAVE system to include records about every American citizen, and then chose to deepen it by entering into a settlement agreement that directly conflicted with litigation already pending in federal court,” said Skye Perryman, President and CEO of Democracy Forward. “A federal court has now rejected the administration’s attempt to escape the consequences of its own actions, recognizing that this predicament is one of the government’s own making — not a reason to keep an unlawful system in place. Americans should not have to sacrifice their privacy rights or risk their right to vote because the government ignored federal law and now wants the courts to rescue it from its own litigation strategy. We will continue defending this landmark judgment in the D.C. Circuit, in the related Florida proceedings, and wherever necessary to ensure the federal government cannot unlawfully repurpose Americans’ sensitive personal information.”

“As the court said earlier this week, the government’s situation is entirely ‘self-inflicted,’ and its litigation tactics ‘make a mockery of separation of powers.’ The order vacating the illegal modifications to SAVE remains, and we will persist in fighting to ensure the government complies with its legal obligations, which the court has already reaffirmed,” said Donald Sherman, President and CEO of CREW. “We look forward to continuing to vigorously defend our clients’, their members’, and the American people’s privacy and voting rights against the Trump administration’s repeated election sabotage efforts and contempt for court orders upholding the rule of law.” 

The litigation will now continue before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit while proceedings related to the Florida enforcement order move forward.

Please contact[email protected] with requests for further comment. 

###

ABOUT EPIC

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) was established in 1994 to protect privacy, freedom of expression, and democratic values in the information age. Our mission is to secure the fundamental right to privacy in the digital age for all people through advocacy, research, and litigation.