Judge Orders D.H.S. to Restore 4 States Access to Citizenship Data

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database — known as the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, system — appeared likely to contain outdated informatio...