The Supreme Court has granted a temporary victory to the Trump administration, lifting a lower court injunction and allowing federal officials and states to utilize an expanded citizenship database to verify voter eligibility ahead of the upcoming midterm elections.

In an unsigned 6-3 decision issued on Friday, the conservative majority paused an order from U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan that had previously blocked the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from deploying its revamped Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program. The district court had ruled that the expanded system—which integrates Social Security Administration records and natural-born citizen data—violated federal privacy laws and posed a risk of wrongly disenfranchising legitimate voters.

Writing for the majority, the court concluded that the injunction inhibited federal efforts to assist states with election administration, noting that claims brought by civil rights groups “likely lack merit”. However, the justices acknowledged that federal law restricting voter roll purges within 90 days of an election would naturally limit the immediate impact of the ruling on the upcoming midterms.

The court’s three liberal justices dissented. Writing for the dissenters, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson argued that the risks of mistakenly revoking valid registrations outweighed the government’s arguments, warning that the decision “puts millions of Americans at risk of being unlawfully targeted by the administration’s unreliable voter purge database”.

While voting rights advocates expressed disappointment over the ruling, they noted that the underlying legal challenge regarding privacy violations will continue in lower courts.