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With one of the most consequential midterm election cycles ever just about five weeks away, the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday decided now would be as good a time as any to issue a bombshell decision granting the Trump administration permission to aggressively vet states’ voter rolls for noncitizen voting. The 6–3 decision allows the use of an expanded federal database that combines immigration status with Social Security data in order to identify potential noncitizen voting in states’ voter rolls, despite this system having a long history of falsely identifying voter fraud. Though the justices attempt to limit the application of this system to only individualized voter inquiries rather than mass voter roll purges ahead of the midterms, since federal law bans any systematic changes to voting processes 90 days ahead of an election, their decision hinges on the Trump administration and GOP-led states actually following the law.

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority concluded that the federal government has an overriding right to assist states and local governments in safeguarding U.S. elections against noncitizen voting, over the objections from voting rights groups who argued the Trump administration’s approach violates federal privacy laws. Solicitor General John Sauer, in defending the Trump administration’s position before SCOTUS, claimed the database in question doesn’t disqualify voters but “merely notifies the States whether the federal government can confirm citizenship.” However, plaintiffs pushed back by noting that Congress........

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