The US Supreme Court on Friday allowed the federal government resume checking voters’ citizenship against Social Security records, reviving a system a lower court ruled violated privacy laws. The decision comes less than six weeks before the Nov. 3 midterm congressional elections.

The unsigned opinion paused a June 22 order by the US District Court for the District of Columbia that set aside the Department of Homeland Security’s 2025 overhaul of its Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program, which added Social Security data and bulk searches. The League of Women Voters, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and others had sued.

The majority found the groups likely had the right to sue but were unlikely to win because a 1996 immigration law lets the Department obtain citizenship data from Social Security “notwithstanding any other provision” of law.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, dissented. She wrote that the court issued “questionable interim rulings” without full briefing or argument and disregarded harm to lawful voters, such as recently naturalized citizens with outdated Social Security records.

The administration told the court the system had verified more than 65 million voters in 26 states as citizens and flagged 28,635 as potential noncitizens.

Federal law bars states from systematically removing ineligible voters within 90 days before a federal election. The majority acknowledged that this limits the ruling’s reach, though individual checks remain allowed. A case set for December argument asks whether that bar applies to removing noncitizens from the rolls.