JUST IN: Supreme Court Delivers Major Victory For Trump Ahead Of Midterms

President Donald Trump scored a Supreme Court victory Friday in his push to check voter citizenship ahead of the midterms, overcoming a lower court order that blocked use of a revamped federal database.

The divided court allowed election officials to use the expanded system to verify citizenship, with the majority pointing to Washington’s obligation to answer verification requests from state and local authorities.

The judge’s order, the majority wrote in an unsigned opinion, “prevents the Federal Government from using the program it believes is best suited to the task.”

All three liberal justices dissented from the Sept. 25 decision.

The ruling restores a tool the administration wants election officials to use as voters prepare to decide control of Congress in November. Its immediate reach is limited, however, by federal restrictions on mass voter roll removals this close to an election. For these midterms, the database can be used only for inquiries involving individual voters.

The dispute centers on the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, known as SAVE, which checks citizenship and immigration status.

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The administration expanded the system to allow bulk searches and searches using Social Security numbers. The database had primarily drawn on immigration records maintained by the Department of Homeland Security.

That overhaul triggered a lawsuit from voting rights groups and privacy advocates, who alleged the system had wrongly identified some Americans as noncitizens and put their eligibility to vote at risk.

A federal judge blocked its use, finding that the changes threatened eligible voters and failed to comply with privacy safeguards. The Supreme Court’s majority allowed the administration to proceed.

The challengers told the justices that the government “has recklessly created an error-laden master citizenship database that endangers millions of Americans’ privacy and voting rights.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson echoed those objections in her dissent, writing that “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.”

Friday’s decision follows a separate election ruling that went against the administration. On Sept. 15, the justices rejected its effort to tighten the use of mail-in ballots before November.

Trump’s broader effort to change voting procedures has also hit a roadblock on Capitol Hill. Legislation that would enact the database changes as part of his proposed voting overhaul passed the House but remains stalled in the Senate.

POLL: Will You Support Trump And His Candidates In The Midterms?