Coalition Files Updated Complaint Challenging Illegal Overhaul of SAVE System, Misuse of Data to Boot Citizens from Voter Rolls

A coalition of plaintiffs including EPIC filed an amended complaint Wednesday in their case challenging the illegal consolidation and misuse of citizenship data by the Department of Homeland Security and Social Security Administration. The new complaint details how the agencies’ actions violate the Privacy Act and the U.S. Constitution and endanger citizens’ fundamental right to vote. In particular, the complaint explains how individuals were purged from state voter rolls or threatened with removal because of unlawful changes to the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system.

The case—League of Women Voters v. DHS—is brought by the League of Women Voters, League of Women Voters of Virginia, League of Women Voters of Louisiana, and EPIC. The coalition is represented by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), Democracy Forward, and the Fair Elections Center. The case was originally filed in September.

The amended complaint continues to challenge the Trump-Vance administration for illegally transforming DHS’s SAVE system into a national citizenship database pooling Social Security Administration data and data from other federal agencies known to be unreliable. The lawsuit details how this secret merging of personal data is in direct violation of the Privacy Act of 1974 and the U.S. Constitution.

As the complaint explains, the administration is encouraging states to purge voter rolls and open criminal investigations based on unreliable results from the SAVE system—despite instances of noncitizen voting being extremely rare. Twenty-two states so far, including Florida, Texas, and Louisiana, use SAVE to purportedly verify voters’ citizenship by bulk-uploading information from voter rolls and personal identification information. 

The amended complaint shows that citizens, especially naturalized citizens, face the threat of being kicked off of voter rolls due to the unlawful changes to SAVE. SSA’s citizenship records contain known inaccuracies: the SSA is not always notified when a noncitizen naturalizes because naturalized citizens are not required to update their SSA data until they draw benefits. The use of SSA citizenship data in the SAVE database leads to erroneous outputs for some naturalized citizens whose SSA records are out of date, threatening their right to vote.

The DHS’s expansion of the SAVE system goes far beyond what Congress has authorized and constitutes an unlawful national citizenship data bank. The amended complaint urges the court to hold the overhaul of the SAVE system unlawful and put an end to the agencies’ misuse of citizenship data.