U.S. Supreme Court Lets Modified SAVE Citizenship Checks Resume: What It Means for Michigan

By Patrice Johnson, Chair and Founder

Michigan Fair Elections Institute | News

September 29, 2026

Friday, Sept. 25, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 6-3 to let the federal government restart its revamped Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program. State and local election officials use SAVE to check whether voters are citizens.

The order in Department of Homeland Security v. League of Women Voters, No. 26A308, puts on hold a June 22, 2026, ruling by a federal judge in Washington, D.C. That ruling had struck down the program.

In a statement to MFEI News & Commentary, Michigan State Senator Ruth Johnson wrote: "As Secretary of State, I saw how much Michigan's voter rolls depend on accurate data from other agencies. The Court has now cleared the way for that data to be used. The question is whether our current secretary of state will use this information properly to clean our voter rolls and ensure that only eligible citizens are voting in our elections."

The League of Women Voters and other groups had sued Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Social Security Administration (SSA), and other federal officials. Together, those agencies are "the government" in this case. The League of Women Voters and its co-plaintiffs argued the new SAVE system broke federal privacy laws and put eligible voters at risk.

Friday's order is not the final word. It freezes the lower court's ruling while the government's appeal moves forward. The core legal questions remain open.

DHS hailed the ruling as "a victory for election integrity." Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

For Michigan voters and clerks, the practical question is this: What does the ruling change with the Nov. 3 election just 36 days away?

How the revamped SAVE program works

Executive Order 14248, signed in March 2025, directed DHS to give election officials fee-free verification access. It also ordered SSA to share its records. DHS launched the modified program in May 2025. The executive order and the subsequent DHS U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) upgrades also made the program FREE of charge for local and state entities.  This fact was NOT challenged by the original suit and will remain unaltered in any ongoing court decisions and rulings. See October 2025 SORN (System of Records Notice). https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2025-10-31/html/2025-19735.htm

Here is how a citizenship check works. An election agency uploads a registered voter's name, date of birth, and full or partial Social Security number. SSA runs that information against its records. SAVE then either confirms the voter is a citizen or asks for more information. Agencies can now search many voters at once.

One feature matters most for voters. If SAVE cannot confirm citizenship, the agency must contact the voter and ask for proof. A failed match does not mean the person is a noncitizen. It triggers a request for documents.

Commenting on the importance of voter citizenship and the SCOTUS decision, Michigan State Representative Rachelle Smit, who chairs the House Election Integrity Committee, provided the following written statement to MFEI News & Commentary: ""Verifying citizenship is not an obstacle to voting. It's the foundation of confidence in every vote that's cast."

What the Court decided

The Court ruled on its emergency docket, without oral argument. Its opinion was unsigned. The Court's opinion first settled a threshold fight. The government argued the plaintiffs had no right to sue at all. Courts call that "standing." To have it, a party must show real harm.

The Court rejected that argument. One member of the plaintiff groups, a naturalized citizen registered to vote in Louisiana, showed that her Social Security records did not list her as a citizen. Louisiana used the modified SAVE program. She likely would have been forced to prove her citizenship all over again. That was harm enough.

But the right to sue is not the right to win. The SCOTUS majority said the groups' privacy-law claims were likely to fail. It cited 8 U.S.C. § 1373, part of a 1996 immigration law. That law bars any restriction on sharing citizenship information with DHS, "[n]otwithstanding any other provision of Federal, State, or local law." It also requires DHS to answer verification requests from state and local officials. In the majority's reading, that language likely overrides the privacy laws.

The Court also found that keeping the program blocked would harm the government. The lower court's order, the majority wrote, "inhibits the Federal Government's efforts to assist state and local agencies in the proper administration of the midterm elections."

The 90-day window

Federal law slams the brakes on voter-roll purges before an election. Under the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA 52 U.S.C. § 20507(c)(2)(A)) states must finish any systematic program to remove ineligible voters at least 90 days before a federal election. For Nov. 3, that deadline has passed.

The majority admitted this limits the ruling's reach. But it said individual, one-voter-at-a-time checks remain lawful during the window.

However, NVRA has typically been used to take initially ELIGIBLE but no-longer active electors off the rolls in a 4-year process, but does not address those erroneous registrations that were not eligible due to noncitizenship and how they should be handled. Cases to address this are ongoing (RNC vs Mi Familia Vota).

Cleta Mitchell, chair of the Election Integrity Network, made a similar argument. In a Sept. 25 interview with Steve Bannon (at minute 2:55), she said using SAVE now would not be "systematic."

The dissent points the other way. According to Jackson, the government admitted in the lower court the 90-day limit was "fatal" to any claim of harm based on systematic roll cleanup.

One question remains open. Does the 90-day ban cover removing noncitizens at all? The Court set that question aside for a pending case, Republican National Committee v. Mi Familia Vota, No. 25-1017.

What it means for Michigan clerks

Michigan does not appear in the opinion. It is not publicly known whether the Bureau of Elections or any Michigan clerk has signed up for or is using the modified program. Access requires an agreement with USCIS.

Even with access, the ruling gives clerks no new power over ballots. Absentee ballots for November are already in the mail. Michigan law allows for ballots to be subject to challenge, but no clear process exists for holding a returned, challenged absentee ballot until citizenship is verified.

The same holds at the polls. Michigan's provisional ballot law, MCL 168.813, covers ballots issued in sealed envelopes at the polls. It says those ballots are counted if a valid registration record turns up or the voter proves identity and residence. Citizenship is not on the list. Those ballots are processed as challenged ballots under MCL 168.745 and 168.746. Each is marked with the voter's poll-list number and counted. The mark lets officials find the ballot later if a court rules on the voter's eligibility. It does not hold the vote back.

Michigan also allows same-day registration until polls close at 8 p.m. That gives a voter a way forward if a registration is questioned. It does not by itself answer a demand for citizenship papers.

What existing law allows before Nov. 3:

•       Individual challenges. Election inspectors or qualified challengers may challenge a voter they know or have good reason to suspect is not legally eligible to vote (MCL 168.727). Challenges made indiscriminately or without good cause are forbidden.

•       Individual citizenship checks through SAVE, which the Court said remain lawful during the window, if Michigan officials have access.

•       Referrals to prosecutors of confirmed noncitizen registration or voting.

Holding ballots until citizenship is proven would require new legislation, giving voters notice, and a chance to respond.

The process would have to comply with Article 2, Section 4 of the Michigan Constitution, which states, "Every citizen of the United States who is an elector qualified to vote in Michigan shall have...[t]he fundamental right to vote." This article bars practices that unreasonably burden the right to vote.

The Americans for Citizen Voting --Michigan amendment would have created a "reasonable" process, but it will not appear on the 2026 ballot.