Cybersecurity Policy Report, Administration Asks Court to Stay Ruling That Blocked Voter Database Over Privacy Concerns, (Jul 9, 2026)

By Tom Leithauser

The Trump administration yesterday asked an appeals court to stay a district court order that required it to dismantle a database that combined Americans’ personal information held by federal agencies in an effort to identify voter fraud.

The administration requested the stay from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit after its request was denied by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

The administration wants a stay during the pendency of its appeal of District Court Judge Sparkle Sooknanan’s decision that combining data from the Social Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system violated the Social Security Act of 1935, the Privacy Act of 1974, and the Administrative Procedure Act (CPR, June 22).

The administration’s use of personal data from multiple agencies for the purposes of identifying ineligible voters had been challenged by the League of Women Voters and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (League of Women Voters, et al. v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, et al., No. 25-cv-03501 (D.D.C. Sept. 30, 2025)).

The administration’s appeal claims Judge Sooknanan’s ruling misread the law and would undermine the government’s ability to help state election officials verify voter eligibility (League of Women Voters, et al. v. DHS, et al., No. 26-5243 (D.C. Cir. Jun. 29, 2026)).

“The district court’s order did not eliminate the government’s need to verify citizenship and immigration status for a host of statutorily mandated purposes; it simply hamstrung the tool best suited for that task, forcing the government to resort to a slower, more cumbersome, and less capable process,” the administration told the appeals court.

But Judge Sooknanan, in her order yesterday denying the administration’s stay request, noted that Congress had considered the effects on government efficiency when it adopted the Social Security Act and the Privacy Act.

“The Federal Defendants can hardly complain that it slows them down to comply with the Social Security Act and the Privacy Act. After all, Congress enacted those statutes to protect the privacy interests of Americans, recognizing that the statutory protections might lead to decreased government efficiency. And recall that DHS has long conducted similar verifications without using SSA data,” she said.

She also criticized the administration’s lawyers for raising new arguments in their stay request that weren’t brought up earlier in the case. “It is impermissible to raise new arguments in the posture of a stay motion and ask for judicial fact-finding on issues for the first time after final judgment has been entered,” Judge Sooknanan said.

“The Court need not now, on an expedited basis, scour the administrative record to explain to the Federal Defendants why each record first transmitted from SSA to DHS and then from DHS to SAVE users constituted a social security number or related record under the Social Security Act,” she added. “A stay motion does not give defendants a do-over, which is exactly what the Federal Defendants seem to want.”

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