Voting rights organizations have initiated legal action against the Texas Secretary of State’s Office and various county election officials. The lawsuit aims to halt the removal of voters from the state’s rolls based on a federal database that is being utilized to verify citizenship. The plaintiffs argue that the state failed to adequately crosscheck its own records, which contain proof of citizenship, before attempting to eliminate voters from the rolls.
The conflict arose last fall when the Texas Secretary of State’s Office announced it had employed a recently revamped federal database, developed under the Trump administration. This tool, sourced from the Department of Homeland Security, had been used for years to confirm the immigration status of individuals applying for benefits. The office claimed to have identified 2,724 potential noncitizens among the state’s voter rolls, prompting counties to investigate these cases.
Subsequent investigations revealed that several individuals flagged as potential noncitizens had already provided proof of citizenship when obtaining a driver’s license or state ID from the Texas Department of Public Safety. At least one county confirmed that some of these identified voters had indeed shown proof of their citizenship.
In the lawsuit, filed in a federal district court in Austin, the plaintiffs contend that the database, known as SAVE, is not reliable. They assert that Texas’s decision to use this database to remove individuals—including naturalized U.S. citizens—from the voter rolls violates the National Voter Registration Act.
The plaintiffs highlighted in their filing, referencing reports from various news outlets, that the Secretary of State’s Office did not consult the Department of Public Safety’s records, which could verify the citizenship of numerous registered voters, before placing the responsibility on voters to provide documentary proof of their status.
The Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit watchdog, has filed the lawsuit on behalf of several voting rights and advocacy groups. These include the League of Latin American Citizens (LULAC), Texas LULAC, LULAC Council 102, and the nonpartisan advocacy organization Common Cause, along with its members.
The plaintiffs are seeking a court ruling to declare that the state’s actions regarding voter removals using the SAVE database are in violation of the National Voter Registration Act. They want the court to prevent the Texas Secretary of State’s Office from dispatching lists of suspected noncitizens to counties without conducting thorough and consistent investigations. Additionally, they request that the court stops state and county election officials from removing individuals from the voter rolls solely because they have been identified as noncitizens by the SAVE system. They also seek to have anyone removed reinstated on the voter rolls until it can be definitively established that they are not U.S. citizens.
As of now, the state and county defendants have not yet responded to the complaint. The Texas Secretary of State’s Office declined to comment on the matter. Another lawsuit challenging the Department of Homeland Security’s use of the SAVE database is also currently pending in federal court.
