The Supreme Court on Sept. 25 said the Trump administration can use an updated immigration database to verify the citizenship of voters.

A majority of justices agreed to stay pending the outcome of an appeal of a June order from a federal judge that barred the use of a revamped database called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system.

The majority also said that keeping in place the prohibition “inhibits the Federal Government’s efforts to assist state and local agencies.”

States regularly use the system. Texas Secretary of State Robert Howden recently said the state in the fall of 2025 ran the names of its 18 million registered voters through the database and identified 2,724 people who may be noncitizens.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a dissent that was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

They said that connecting the database to the Social Security Administration’s data did not fit under the “strict limits” imposed by the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, and that the law did not override other statutes such as the Privacy Act that organizations say the administration violated.

“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. “This imbalance, along with the Government’s improbable merits arguments, should have compelled the Court to deny the stay.”

A lawyer representing the organizations did not return a request for comment.

The White House, asked for comment, pointed to a social media post from James Percival, general counsel of the Department of Homeland Security.

“We had to file an emergency petition in the Supreme Court just so we could use government data to help states stop noncitizens from illegally voting,” Percival wrote.