The U.S. Supreme Court says in a split decision Friday that the Trump administration can follow through with a new way of cross-checking voter eligibility.
All of the liberal justices dissented against the ruling that temporarily allows states to check voters’ citizenship status while the case continues.
'We will be doing everything in our power to protect Americans’ voting and privacy rights by ensuring that the district court decision stands.'
States can use the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system organized by the Department of Homeland Security and check voter eligibility.
Opponents of the SAVE program claim that lawful voters will be wrongly declared ineligible to vote.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson made the argument in a scathing dissent that was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.
"The Court focuses only on the harms the Government will purportedly suffer absent a stay, disregarding the harms that the modified SAVE system has caused, and will likely continue to cause, to lawful voters," she wrote.
"The harm caused by burdening or disenfranchising even a few lawful voters outweighs the nonexistent harm that the Government experiences when it is prevented from taking an action that it likely lacks the authority to take," Jackson added.
The Supreme Court order stayed a federal judge ruling from June that blocked the expanded SAVE system, determining doing so violated Americans' privacy rights.
The DHS General Counsel James Percival reacted to the ruling on social media.
"Yes, you read that right. We had to file an emergency petition in the Supreme Court just so we could use government data to help states stop noncitizens from illegally voting," he wrote.
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The plaintiffs in the case, which included the League of Women Voters, said the effort was not over and that they would continue to challenge the SAVE system.
"This case is not over," the group said in a statement. "The D.C. district court ruled that the expanded SAVE program violated multiple laws. We will be doing everything in our power to protect Americans’ voting and privacy rights by ensuring that the district court decision stands."
Jackson also warned that the states could use the SAVE system to "cancel the voter registrations of at least some recently naturalized citizens."
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[H/T Blaze Media]
