Supreme Court Lets Expanded Citizenship Checks Move Forward as Georgia Details Its Voter Review Process

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday allowed the federal government’s expanded citizenship-verification system to remain in use while a legal challenge continues, a decision with direct implications for Georgia as election officials continue checking voter eligibility ahead of November.

The court stayed a lower-court ruling that had blocked the expanded version of the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program, known as SAVE. The newer system allows state and local election officials to conduct bulk citizenship checks and draws on additional federal records, including Social Security data.

Georgia has already been using SAVE as part of its voter-roll review process.

Robert Sinners, communications director for Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, told North Atlanta Star Friday that the state has conducted three citizenship audits since 2022.

“If a voter’s citizenship cannot be confirmed, they will remain in pending status until proving their citizenship,” Sinners said.

Sinners also provided a statement from the Secretary of State’s office saying Raffensperger “has led the charge to make SAVE more accessible to states, advocating for its use as a user-friendly, effective tool that strengthens election integrity.”

The office did not say whether Friday’s Supreme Court action would immediately trigger another statewide review or an expanded round of checks before the November election.

Georgia has expanded its use of SAVE

Georgia’s first statewide citizenship audit began in 2022. According to the Secretary of State’s office, that review identified 1,634 people who had attempted to register but whose citizenship could not be verified through SAVE. The office says those individuals were prevented from being added to the voter rolls or voting unless eligibility was established.

Georgia has since broadened the information used in its reviews, including Department of Driver Services records, juror affidavits and federal SAVE data.

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Earlier this month, the Secretary of State’s office said its latest citizenship audit identified 432 records of potential noncitizens who had voted at some point since 1996. Of those, 204 had already been placed into “Pending Citizenship” status through earlier reviews, while another 228 were identified through additional state auditing and expanded SAVE searches.

Those records span decades. The state noted that some registrations date as far back as 1948 and that some of the people identified had not voted since the 1990s. The figures represent records flagged for further citizenship review, not a finding that all 432 people were ineligible when they voted.

What Friday’s Supreme Court order does

The expanded SAVE system stems from a March 2025 executive order directing the Department of Homeland Security to make federal information available to state and local officials for voter-citizenship verification.

The federal government subsequently changed SAVE so agencies could submit large batches of names rather than checking voters individually and could use additional federal databases in the process.

Friday’s Supreme Court order allows those changes to remain in effect while the underlying lawsuit continues.

The order does not itself require Georgia to remove anyone from the voter rolls, nor does it resolve the broader legal dispute over how the system may be used.

The court’s three liberal justices dissented from the decision to grant the stay, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson raising concerns about the possibility of inaccurate or outdated federal data affecting eligible voters.

What remains unclear in Georgia

North Atlanta Star asked the Secretary of State’s office whether Georgia plans to run the full voter roll through the expanded system again, whether Friday’s ruling changes its election preparations, and for updated figures involving Fulton, Forsyth and Gwinnett counties.

The office did not provide those details Friday.

For North Atlanta voters, the most immediate point is that Georgia’s citizenship-verification process was already underway before the Supreme Court action. Friday’s decision removes a federal court restriction on the expanded SAVE system while the case proceeds, giving Georgia continued access to the broader federal verification tools it has already incorporated into recent audits.