Campaign Legal Center (CLC) filed a lawsuit on behalf of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), its local affiliates, and Common Cause challenging efforts by the Texas secretary of State and counties across the state to purge citizens from the voter rolls.
Back to topTexas has entered into an agreement with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to use faulty data to purge Texans from the voter rolls ahead of the midterm elections.
Every American citizen, regardless of where they are born, should have the freedom to vote. But Texas’ latest actions threaten that freedom to vote for potentially...
CLC filed a lawsuit on behalf of the League of United Latin American Citizens, Texas League of United Latin American Citizens, the League of United American Citizens Council 102, and Common Cause challenging Texas’ reliance on the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program to verify the citizenship status of registered voters in Texas and remove voters from the rolls in a discriminatory and non-uniform manner.
On October 16, 2025, the Texas secretary of State sent county election officials a list of voters flagged by SAVE for removal. October 21, 2025, just a day after publicly announcing that the state had run its entire list of more than 18 million voters through the federal SAVE system, the Texas secretary of State directed counties to investigate flagged voters, send them notices of cancellation of voter registration, and remove voters who failed to respond.
Prior to issuing this directive, however, the secretary's office failed to do any investigation of their own despite the ease of — and prior history using — Department of Public Safety data to confirm whether voters flagged by SAVE were actually citizens. The office also did not provide guidance to counties about whether to compare the lists to other available data or how to determine the reliability of the purge lists.
In the absence of clear guidance, counties proceeded inconsistently in their investigations of flagged voters. Some counties did not further investigate these voters' citizenship status, opting instead to send letters to voters demanding they provide proof of citizenship. If a voter did not supply the required documents within 30 days, they were purged from the rolls. In at least a few counties, officials canceled the registrations of naturalized U.S. citizens who later provided proof of their citizenship to the county.
The state's directive to counties is deeply problematic given the widely known unreliability of data from the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) SAVE system, which relies on stale data and regularly misidentifies naturalized U.S. citizens as noncitizens.
These databases often incorrectly classify eligible voters because they do not reliably update when people become naturalized and are therefore eligible to vote. Still, the state, nor most counties, did not take steps to compare the SAVE results to available data held in state agencies, nor did Texas instruct counties to do so.
As such, some Texans have already been illegally purged from the voter rolls, and the registrations of thousands more are at risk. Approximately 11% of Texas’ eligible voters are naturalized citizens, and over 704,000 Texans were naturalized between 2016 and 2024.
Citizenship inquiries through SAVE often produce outdated results, especially for naturalized citizens. Other states have tried using the DHS federal SAVE system in voter roll list maintenance, and those programs have often purged hundreds of eligible voters from the rolls.
There are already strict laws in place that ensure only U.S. citizens can vote in federal elections. The safeguards we already have in place — including strict criminal punishment, financial penalties and even possible deportation — ensure that only eligible citizens can register and vote. In addition, every Texas voter already signs an attestation of citizenship under penalty of perjury when they register to vote.
The National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) prohibits discrimination in maintaining voter registration lists, including discrimination against naturalized, acquired and derived citizens. Campaign Legal Center’s lawsuit alleges that Texas' purge program violates the NVRA’s provision prohibiting discriminatory voter list maintenance because the purge program has removed or threatened to remove predominantly naturalized and acquired U.S. citizens from the rolls.
Additionally, the NVRA requires election officials to conduct list maintenance procedures in a uniform manner. Texas’ counties have conducted the purge program in a chaotic, non-uniform manner, in clear violation of the NVRA’s requirement.
Finally, CLC contends that Texas has violated the NVRA’s public disclosure provision by refusing to furnish a list of noncitizens who have been removed from the voter rolls as a result of the purge program.
This is not the first time CLC has fought back against the use of notoriously unreliable database matching systems.
We successfully sued Texas in 2019 when it engaged in a similar effort that resulted in the targeting of tens of thousands of naturalized citizens. We successfully sued to halt an illegal purge program that swept up thousands of eligible voters in Alabama, and we’ve submitted an amicus brief in support of a challenge to the consolidation and distribution of flawed federal citizenship data to states and other federal agencies. CLC and cocounsel sued Ohio for a law that requires the use of unreliable state and federal database matching systems to identify potential non-U.S. citizens for removal from the voter registration lists.
Our democracy works best when every eligible voter can make their voice heard — but Texas' unfair, illegal voter purge program puts far too many Texans’ freedom to vote this November in jeopardy. This case is part of a continued and urgent effort to ensure that all citizens, regardless of where they are born, have access to the ballot.
