A federal judge in Florida has ordered the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to immediately restore key features of a federal immigration verification system that several states rely on to check voter rolls and professional license applicants.
U.S. District Judge T. Kent Wetherell II, of the Northern District of Florida, issued the ruling July 7, granting an emergency motion filed by Florida, Ohio, Iowa, and Indiana to enforce a settlement agreement with DHS.
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Background: What is the SAVE system?
At the center of the dispute is the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, system — a federal tool that allows state and local governments to verify an individual’s immigration status.
Florida originally sued DHS in October 2024, arguing the SAVE system was an “inadequate tool” because it required a unique immigration identifier and could not run queries using a Social Security number, driver’s license number, or similar common identifiers.
The lawsuit was resolved in November 2025 through a settlement agreement that required DHS to upgrade the SAVE system — specifically by integrating it with the Social Security Administration to allow searches using full or partial Social Security numbers, and by enabling bulk-upload verification requests so states would not have to submit queries one by one.
Features disabled after D.C. court ruling
DHS fulfilled those obligations from December 2025 through June 2026. But on June 23, 2026, the agency disabled the bulk-upload and Social Security number search features after a federal judge in Washington, D.C., vacated those modifications.
U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan, in the District of Columbia case League of Women Voters v. DHS, ruled the SAVE system modifications violated the Social Security Act and the Privacy Act.
DHS disabled the features the following day.
States say harm is real
Florida, Iowa, and Ohio filed declarations in court describing concrete harm from the loss of those features.
Iowa said it could no longer comply with a state law requiring verification of citizenship for professional license applicants. Florida and Ohio said they were unable to comply with state laws requiring citizenship verification for registered voters.
“The interests that the amici were purportedly vindicating in Judge Sooknanan’s case are far outweighed by Plaintiffs’ sovereign interests in ensuring that non-citizens are not on their voter rolls, that unlawfully present aliens are not receiving professional licenses,” Judge Wetherell wrote.
Judge rejects DHS’s legal arguments
Judge Wetherell pushed back on several arguments made by DHS and by amici — the League of Women Voters and the Electronic Privacy Information Center — who submitted briefs opposing enforcement.
DHS argued the court lacked jurisdiction to enforce the agreement under the Tucker Act, which grants the U.S. Court of Federal Claims exclusive jurisdiction over contract disputes with the federal government. Wetherell called that argument “frivolous,” explaining the settlement was court-approved and functioned as the equivalent of a consent decree — making any violation a breach of a court order.
DHS also argued it should not be forced to comply with two conflicting court orders. Wetherell acknowledged the bind but said the harm to the states outweighed the agency’s procedural predicament.
“One of the orders has to give, and not surprisingly, the Court is not persuaded by Defendants’ (and the amici’s) arguments that its order is the one that should give,” he wrote.
Judge disagrees with D.C. ruling on the law
Wetherell went a step further, explicitly disagreeing with Judge Sooknanan’s legal analysis on both the Social Security Act and the Privacy Act.
On the Social Security Act, Wetherell wrote that while one provision appears to restrict the Social Security Administration from disclosing Social Security numbers, a separate federal immigration statute — 8 U.S.C. § 1373(a) — expressly overrides other federal law when it comes to sharing citizenship and immigration status information.
On the Privacy Act, the judge concluded that using Social Security numbers to verify the identity of potential non-citizens falls within the law’s “routine use” exception.
What happens next
Judge Wetherell ordered DHS to immediately reinstate states’ access to the bulk-upload and Social Security number search features in the SAVE system.
He also ordered both parties to file a status report within seven days detailing DHS’s compliance and the status of related proceedings in the D.C. case and any appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
The ruling sets up a potential conflict between two federal district courts, with no appellate court yet having weighed in on the underlying legal questions.