A federal judge in Florida ordered the Homeland Security Department on Tuesday to once again allow four Republican-led states access to federal citizenship data to help screen their voter rolls, contradicting a judge in Washington who had ordered the agency to withdraw that access nationally.
The decision, which was based on a legal settlement the Trump administration reached with the State of Florida last year, created a remarkable split between two courts over the legality of measures that President Trump has pursued to insert the federal government into election administration. It also renewed questions about the administration’s pattern of entering settlements with ideologically aligned states in ways that bind the federal government into specific policies for years beyond Mr. Trump’s second term.
In a concise 10-page opinion, Judge T. Kent Wetherell II of the Federal District Court for the Northern District of Florida, a Trump appointee, wrote that under the legal agreement from last year, the Homeland Security Department had agreed with Florida officials to cooperate on “improving and modernizing” a federal citizenship database, including by integrating Social Security data. As part of that, he wrote, the department agreed to allow bulk searches of the database submitted by state officials.
In addition to Florida, the attorneys general of Ohio, Iowa and Indiana had joined the case last year, making those states subject to the order on Tuesday.
Yet just two weeks earlier, a federal judge in Washington had ruled that repurposing the database — which was historically used for assessing immigration benefits — for voter screening at Mr. Trump’s behest violated prohibitions on the disclosure of Social Security records.
The judge, Sparkle L. Sooknanan, an appointee of President Joseph R. Biden Jr., added that the merged database — known as the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, system — appeared likely to contain outdated information on citizenship that could lead to the disenfranchisement of voters. She blocked the Trump administration from allowing states to search their rolls against the federal data set.
It was not immediately clear how the Homeland Security Department would straddle the conflicting rulings, or whether a higher court might be asked to intervene.
Judge Wetherell wrote in his opinion on Tuesday: “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 Judge Sooknanan prohibiting them from doing so. One of the orders has to give.”
“This court is not bound by Judge Sooknanan’s order, and with all due respect, the court disagrees with the conclusions in that order,” he added.
The case before Judge Wetherell was originally brought by the Florida attorney general’s office against the Biden administration, and argued that the federal government had ignored state officials’ inquiries seeking to verify individuals’ citizenship.
But after the Trump administration took power last year, the Justice Department moved to settle the case, agreeing to the state’s demands and more — including the provision for the merging of the citizenship data with Social Security data.
Under the agreement he approved in December, Judge Wetherell had bound the federal government to its terms for 20 years, allowing the court to step in if the government changed course.
The four states had filed an emergency motion to enforce the order on June 30, receiving the order just one week later.
“Judge Wetherell’s decision bolsters Ohio’s longstanding commitment to maintaining the integrity of our voter rolls,” Dominic Binkley, the press secretary for the state’s attorney general, Andy Wilson, said in a statement. “We’re pleased to see it issued so quickly.”
Judge Wetherell has previously approved other legal settlements that commit the federal government to specific actions more than a decade beyond Mr. Trump’s term in office.
Under another settlement that also grew out of a lawsuit against the Biden administration, the Trump administration agreed not to use its power to parole migrants into the country for 15 years, also receiving Judge Wetherell’s approval.
Legal scholars and former Justice Department officials have sounded the alarm about the proliferation of similar settlements under the Trump administration, particularly in cases brought by Republican states that often share the president’s goals. Such binding agreements that tie the government’s hands across multiple presidencies were once discouraged by the department under previous administrations.
Multiple people involved in the original lawsuit with the Florida attorney general’s office have now also taken senior roles in the Trump administration, including James H. Percival, who serves as the Homeland Security Department’s top lawyer.
The League of Women Voters and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which brought the lawsuit against the Trump administration heard by Judge Sooknanan, had raised those concerns to Judge Wetherell, as well. In an outside friend-of-the-court brief submitted on their behalf by the legal advocacy organization Democracy Forward, the group argued that efforts to repurpose the database violated the law and that the consent agreement could not override those findings.
The brief added that letting the Homeland Security Department circumvent Judge Sooknanan’s order would encourage other states to cut their own agreements with the Justice Department.
“Reaching a contrary result would incentivize collusion in which aligned federal and state entities could lock in agreements to perform unlawful conduct while evading meaningful judicial review of that conduct,” the brief said.
Judge Wetherell wrote that he had considered arguments against enforcing the settlement but decided to order that the states’ access be restored rather than deferring to Judge Sooknanan or the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which is considering an appeal by the Trump administration.
In light of the states’ interests, he wrote, he decided to issue the conflicting order to the Homeland Security Department and “leave it to them to figure out how best to fulfill those obligations.” He ordered both sides to update him on how they would comply within seven days.
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