EPIC Urges Supreme Court to Protect Voters and Strike Down Arizona’s SAVE-based Voter-Registration Cancellation Program 

On October 20, 2026, EPIC filed an amicus brief in Republican National Committee v. Mi Familia Vota urging the Supreme Court to strike down Arizona House Bill (H.B.) 2243. EPIC was represented on the brief by pro bono counsel from Jenner & Block and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). 

H.B. 2243 creates a voter-registration cancellation program that requires county recorders to compare all voter-registrants to the error-prone Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). If there is a match in the SAVE system, the recorder presumes that the individual is a noncitizen and cancels their registration. These cancellations occur even inside the traditional National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) quiet period: a 90-day window before a federal election during which the NVRA prohibits the systematic removal of ineligible voters from the official list of eligible voters. This 90-day quiet period was created to safeguard voters from being unfairly removed from voter rolls right before an election. But despite the NVRA’s clear prohibition against systematic removal, Arizona and the United States contend that H.B. 2243’s bulk matching using SAVE is not preempted by the NVRA’s quiet period.  

In the brief, EPIC argues that H.B. 2243’s required monthly checks against SAVE do not fit the exemptions for the NVRA quiet period. SAVE was not built to check for citizenship status despite DHS’s retooling, and a match is not enough to readily ascertain whether someone is a noncitizen. In fact, DHS itself has conceded that shortfalls in data accuracy mean that SAVE cannot reliably confirm citizenship for citizens. The use of SAVE by other States to cancel voter registration has frequently led to the inaccurate identification and subsequent voter-registration cancellation of U.S. citizens. And once someone’s voter-registration is cancelled, re-registering is an onerous and time-consuming process that can prevent citizens from participating in our democracy and exercising their right to vote. 

EPIC has directly worked to fight against the unlawful use of the modified SAVE system to purge voter rolls. EPIC led a coalition to denounce DHS’s changes to the SAVE system and is a plaintiff in League of Women Voters v. DHS which challenges the unlawful expansion and misuse of the modified SAVE system as a national citizenship databank.