Supreme Court Allows Trump DHS to Share Social Security Data with Elections Officials

Another Friday afternoon, another Supreme Court decision on the ground rules for the midterm elections. Today’s 6–3 decision in Department of Homeland Security v. League of Women Voters involved an especially tortured effort at reading federal law in a way that would restrain Donald Trump, and the Court’s conservative majority rejected it.

The Court has walked a fine line in parsing the legality of Trump’s executive orders aimed at noncitizen voting. It has been compelled by the calendar to reach all of these rulings on the emergency docket. To recap: First, in Alabama v. California, the Court ruled 6–3 that Trump could legally direct the Department of Homeland Security to develop citizenship lists for use in checking voter citizenship; could legally direct the Department of Justice to prioritize prosecutions of noncitizen voting; and could direct the U.S. Postal Service to develop regulations on election mail. When those USPS regulations came before the Court in United States Postal Service v. California, the Court ruled 7–2 that the new rules couldn’t be used for this election cycle. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett all joined both rulings; the only explanation of the latter came from Kavanaugh, who opined that “applying the rule in the 2026 elections would be arbitrary and capricious in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act because state and local election officials do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before the elections.”

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Dan McLaughlin

Dan McLaughlin is a senior writer at National Review Online and a fellow at National Review Institute.

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Another Friday afternoon, another Supreme Court decision on the ground rules for the midterm elections. Today’s 6–3 decision in Department of Homeland Security v. League of Women Voters involved an especially tortured effort at reading federal law in a way that would restrain Donald Trump, and the Court’s conservative majority rejected it.

The Court has walked a fine line in parsing the legality of Trump’s executive orders aimed at noncitizen voting. It has been compelled by the calendar to reach all of these rulings on the emergency docket. To recap: First, in Alabama v. California, the Court ruled 6–3 that Trump could legally direct the Department of Homeland Security to develop citizenship lists for use in checking voter citizenship; could legally direct the Department of Justice to prioritize prosecutions of noncitizen voting; and could direct the U.S. Postal Service to develop regulations on election mail. When those USPS regulations came before the Court in United States Postal Service v. California, the Court ruled 7–2 that the new rules couldn’t be used for this election cycle. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett all joined both rulings; the only explanation of the latter came from Kavanaugh, who opined that “applying the rule in the 2026 elections would be arbitrary and capricious in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act because state and local election officials do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before the elections.”