Citizenship is not a privacy violation

The Court let the government check who is on the rolls. Good.

Six weeks from a midterm, the Supreme Court did something simple. It let the federal government resume checking voter citizenship against Social Security records.

An unsigned opinion paused a June order from a D.C. federal judge that had shut down Homeland Security’s overhaul of the SAVE program. That overhaul added Social Security data and bulk searches. The League of Women Voters and the Electronic Privacy Information Center sued. The majority said those groups may have standing, but they are unlikely to win. A 1996 immigration statute lets the department get citizenship data from Social Security “notwithstanding any other provision” of law.

That is the law talking. Not a mood.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Kagan. She called the interim ruling “questionable, complained about incomplete briefing, and warned about harm to lawful voters — naturalized citizens with stale Social Security files. Fair warning. Fix the files. Do not ban the check.

The administration told the Court the system had already verified more than 65 million voters in 26 states as citizens and flagged 28,635 as possible noncitizens. Those are the numbers they put on paper. Critics say the data can err. So can a roll that never gets tested.

Federal law still bars states from mass removals of ineligible voters in the 90 days before a federal election. The majority noted that limit. Individual checks remain. A December argument will ask whether that 90-day bar covers removing noncitizens. Until then, the country can still ask a basic question: is this person a citizen?

Privacy is not a shield for a blank box on citizenship. States run elections. The federal government may answer a lawful data request. A court that treats verification as a scandal has forgotten what a republic is for.

November 3 will decide Congress. Clean rolls are not a conspiracy. They are maintenance. Run the checks. Argue the hard cases in December. Do not pretend asking for citizenship is the crime.