US judge orders four states be given access to citizenship data for voter checks [View all]

Source: Reuters

July 8, 2026 12:18 PM EDT Updated 2 hours ago


July 8 (Reuters) - A federal judge in Florida has ordered the U.S. Department of Homeland Security ​to resume giving four Republican-led states access to an immigration database to check the citizenship status of people on their voter rolls, after ‌another judge blocked it from continuing to use the database nationwide.

U.S. District Judge T. Kent Wetherell II in Pensacola in a ruling on Tuesday said he was aware of Washington, D.C.-based U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan's June 22 decision to halt use of the revamped database, which contains Social Security numbers, citizenship status, and other data on people nationwide.

But Wetherell, who was appointed by Republican President Donald Trump, ​said that by disabling Florida, Ohio, Iowa and Indiana's access to key features in the database in response to Sooknanan's ruling, DHS had violated an earlier ​settlement the Trump administration entered into with the states to improve and modernize the system.

"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 said. Sooknanan, who was appointed by Democratic President Joe Biden, had sided ​with voting rights and privacy advocates who argued that the overhaul of the system, known as SAVE, made it less accurate and risked disenfranchising eligible voters.

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-judge-orders-four-states-be-given-access-citizenship-data-voter-checks-2026-07-08/