A federal judge in Florida has ordered the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to restore four Republican-led states’ access to an immigration database used to check the citizenship status of people on their voter rolls, setting up a direct conflict with another judge who had already blocked the database’s nationwide use.
U.S. District Judge T. Kent Wetherell II, sitting in Pensacola, issued the ruling Tuesday. He acknowledged Washington, D.C.-based U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan’s June 22 decision halting use of the revamped database, which stores Social Security numbers, citizenship status and other personal data on people nationwide.
Wetherell, appointed by Republican President Donald Trump, said DHS had violated an earlier settlement with Florida, Ohio, Iowa and Indiana when it disabled the states’ access to key database features in order to comply with Sooknanan’s order. “The fact that Defendants disabled those features to comply with Judge Sooknanan’s order does not change the fact that they violated the agreement,” he wrote.
Sooknanan, appointed by Democratic President Joe Biden, had sided with voting rights and privacy advocates who argued the overhaul of the system, known as SAVE, made it less accurate and put eligible voters at risk of losing their registration. Wetherell said he disagreed with her conclusion that the revamp was unlawful or that it violated privacy statutes governing federal disclosure of Social Security numbers.
Wetherell said that when he approved the Trump administration’s settlement of a Biden-era lawsuit Florida filed in 2024 over SAVE’s earlier implementation, he had already found, implicitly, that the changes required by the deal complied with federal law.
He acknowledged the bind his ruling created for DHS. “One from this Court requiring them to include certain features in the SAVE system and one from Judge Sooknanan prohibiting them from doing so,” he wrote, describing the two contradictory orders the agency now faces. “One of the orders has to give, and not surprisingly, the Court is not persuaded by Defendants’ (and the amici’s) arguments that its order is the one that should give,” he added.
Sooknanan responded in a separate order Wednesday, saying Wetherell’s ruling has no bearing on the case in front of her. She also rejected the Trump administration’s request to pause her ruling while it pursues an appeal. She wrote that Wetherell “erred in significant ways” and effectively issued an advisory opinion, arguing he “had no authority to make merits determinations about the legality of SAVE, either implicitly or explicitly.”
DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Election administration in the U.S. falls to individual states. Trump and his allies have repeatedly claimed states aren’t doing enough to stop voter fraud, despite audits and academic research showing it is uncommon. Trump has also falsely claimed his 2020 election loss resulted from fraud.
His administration’s push to expand federal control over elections has run into repeated resistance in the courts. Judges have separately blocked Trump’s executive orders that would have required proof of citizenship for voter registration and restricted how mail ballots are counted.
Last year’s overhaul of SAVE let users search multiple records simultaneously and gave them access to individuals’ Social Security numbers. Since then, several Republican-led states have run their voter rolls against the database and canceled the registrations of voters flagged as noncitizens.
Voting rights groups, including the League of Women Voters, say the database can return outdated results, sometimes mislabeling naturalized citizens, who are legally eligible to vote, as noncitizens.
