Supreme Court allows citizenship verification program

DHS revamped its Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program to monitor whether individuals are eligible to vote in local, state and federal elections. The program uses Social Security numbers, date of birth and other identifying information to determine whether an individual is eligible to vote or must be removed from voter rolls. 

The League of Women Voters argued the program violated confidentiality and privacy protections by allowing DHS to access the Social Security numbers of individuals on the list. However, the majority of justices on the high court disagreed. 

"Congress, however, separately and expressly authorized DHS to request and receive information relating to citizenship and immigration status from other agencies, including [the Social Security Administration]," the majority of justices wrote. 

Justices on the court ruled that the federal government has the authority to respond when issues of citizenship arise as states administer elections. 

"The Federal Government has an obligation to respond to requests from state and local election officials seeking to verify the citizenship of voters," the justices wrote. 

However, Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor disagreed with the court's majority opinion. Jackson said laws that allowed the Social Security Administration to share information placed strict limits on how it could be used across the federal government due to privacy concerns. 

"There is no reason to believe that Congress meant to repeal laws that would otherwise prohibit federal agencies from disclosing citizenship information," Jackson wrote in the court's dissenting opinion. 

Jackson argued that her interpretation of the statute is "common sense" because the government never previously attempted to use immigration law to access social security information. She warned against the new program being used to revoke citizens' voter registration.

"In my view, however, 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 wrote.