Conflicting rulings in Washington, DC, and Florida are compelling the Department of Homeland Security to either play ball with red states seeking information on immigration status or shut down “bulk” inquiries using Social Security Numbers.
Despite a June ruling blocking DHS from helping states verify large quantities of individuals’ immigration status using SSNs, US District Court for the Northern District of Florida Judge T. Kent Wetherell II said Tuesday that DHS must stick to a prior settlement it reached with Florida, Indiana, Iowa, and Ohio to run these searches.
“The Court understands that this puts Defendants in a bind because they are subject to two contradictory orders — one from this Court requiring them to include certain features in the SAVE system and one from” US District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan “prohibiting them from doing so,” said Wetherell, a Trump appointee. “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.”
The dispute boils down to whether federal privacy laws prevent states from utilizing a beefed up Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system to perform robust checks on migrants’ status for use in state licensing and election registration processes. The GOP-led states sued at the tail end of the Biden administration and struck a deal with DHS in late 2025 to get assistance using this federal database.
In September 2025 the League of Women Voters sued DHS in Washington, arguing that the way it was helping states—through creation of a centralized database containing the private information of millions—has violated the privacy rights of US citizens and led many citizens to be incorrectly wiped off voter rolls.
Wetherell said this put him in a strange position. He didn’t explicitly rule on the legality of the use of SAVE system when he approved settlement. But he said he would have found the use above board, and his prior approval of the settlement expanding its use should take precedence.
He disputed Sooknanan’s reasoning, saying the Social Security Act doesn’t preclude the use of these identifying numbers from use in citizenship certification. This was a routine use, and the challenging states have a better argument about who is the most harmed by blocking this use, he said.
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, etc,” Wetherell said.
In a statement, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R) called it a “massive win” giving the state “unfettered access to this verification tool.”
“The radical left ran to a friendly court to try to shut us down, but, fortunately, our right to access these records has not only been restored but also upheld as lawful,” he said.
The Florida Attorney General’s Office represents the state. The Justice Department represents DHS.
The case is Florida v. Dep’t of Homeland Sec., N.D. Fla., No. 3:24-cv-00509, 7/7/26.