In its ruling, the Supreme Court said the federal government “has an obligation to respond to requests from state and local election officials seeking to verify the citizenship of voters.”
The lower court order blocking the use of SAVE “prevents the Federal Government from using the programme it believes is best suited to the task”.
Attorney General Todd Blanche welcomed the Supreme Court ruling as a “huge victory for election integrity”, saying it will “allow states to clear the voter rolls of illegal voters”.
Election experts, however, said the ruling is unlikely to have a major impact on the November elections because most US states ban purges of voters 90 days ahead of an election.
“Both the majority and dissent agree that this case is likely to have limited impact on the midterms,” Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said in a blog post. “Compared to the recent mail-in voting case, this one is not very important substantively.”
Hasen was referring to a Supreme Court decision earlier this month that blocked a Trump plan that would have restricted the use of mail-in ballots.
Trump reacted furiously to that ruling calling it “horrible” and “highly political” in a Truth Social post.
