A federal court ruled Monday that the Trump administration’s national voter database violates federal privacy laws, interferes with Americans’ right to vote, and must be dismantled.

In the ruling, Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan of the District Court of Washington D.C. wrote that records reviewed by the court show federal agencies knew that the SAVE voter database violated federal laws like the Privacy Act, the Social Security Act and the Administrative Procedure Act, but were “scrambling” to comply with President Trump’s executive order to create a system for mass voter verification.

That pressure resulted in agencies “haphazardly” combining and repurposing the personal information of millions of Americans from different government databases, including citizenship data they knew was unreliable.

“The Court therefore sets aside and vacates the 2025 SAVE modified system and the related notices because they were contrary to law, arbitrary and capricious, in excess of statutory authority, and without observance of procedure required by law,” Sooknanan wrote.

The League of Women Voters, its local affiliate groups and the Electronic Privacy Information Center filed the lawsuit last year. They argued the administration violated privacy laws that restrict the government’s ability to collect or combine private data without congressional authorization.

Sooknanan wrote that the SAVE database violates a prohibition in the Social Security Act against the disclosure of Social Security numbers and other related SSA records as well as substantive and procedural protections in the Privacy Act, which prevent the non-consensual disclosure of certain information both by federal agencies and between federal agencies and require notice and comment.

The court also ruled that SAVE violates the Administrative Procedures Act, which governs how the federal government develops regulations and makes official decisions to ensure they’re fair and impartial.

Sooknanan had earlier declined to rule the database illegal under the Administrative Procedures Act, saying the plaintiffs had failed to prove the data would cause  irreparable harm. In her final ruling, she changed course, writing that the states have since run their voter rolls through the federal government’s modified SAVE system, and some voters have been wrongfully identified as non-citizens and had their voter registrations canceled.

“All in all, the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote,” Sooknanan wrote. “This Court cannot stand idly by while that happens.”

The ruling reinforces longstanding objections from former government officials and privacy experts over the past year, who have said Congress has repeatedly passed privacy laws explicitly to prevent the executive branch from using Americans’ data in ways not proscribed through law. That is what DHS did last year when it took SAVE, a database meant to process government benefits for legal immigrants, and combined it with data from the Social Security Administration and other agencies to create a new massive database of American voters and their citizenship status.

John Davisson, deputy director of enforcement at EPIC, celebrated the decision in a statement, saying the ruling “underscores that government agencies must follow the law, defend privacy and remain accountable to the public they serve.”

 “Today’s decision is a victory for us all. By halting the illegal consolidation of sensitive personal data across federal agencies, the court has safeguarded not only our privacy rights but also the bedrock of our democracy: the right to vote,” said Davisson. 

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The Senate Judiciary Committee approved a new bill this week that seeks to prevent unauthorized deepfakes of American artists, performers and public figures. While the bill sailed through a committee voice vote, both Senators and outside groups say they’re worried it could become a tool for the powerful to quash free speech. 

The NO FAKES Act, introduced by Sens. Chris Coons, D-Del., and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., would give Americans near-exclusive rights to their own digital AI replicas, and those rights live on, passing to heirs, executors and estates for at least 70 years after an individual dies.

While living, creators would be able to essentially license their likeness and image to others, over 10-year contracts for adults and 5 years for minors.

It would also permit individuals to sue anyone who uses their AI-generated image without permission, and pay up to $750,000 for violations. Blackburn submitted letters of support for the bill from more than 40 groups, including the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the American Medical Association, Creative Artists Agency, the Broadcasters’ Associations and the Human Artistry Campaign.

“It is imperative that we put this national standard in place for voice and visual likeness protection of creators, to protect from proliferation of harmful AIgenerated deepfakes that are created without their consent,” said Blackburn in a Thursday markup of the bill.

The introduction of consumer-grade AI tools has made it trivial to create convincing deepfakes of real individuals and public figures. The harms are well documented: bad actors have used them to create nonconsensual pornography or sexualized media of people they know, create child sexual assault material (CSAM) , and blackmail or humiliate individuals.

Artists have faced real challenges in the AI era when it comes to controlling their digital likeness. Last year, the Better Business Bureau warned that its Scam Tracker had been flooded with complaints about AI-celebrity endorsement scams. These included  deepfakes of Oprah Winfrey promoting weight loss products, Kim Kardashian pleading for donations to fight California wildfires, and pop star Taylor Swift and celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay endorsing cookware.

In the political arena, candidates now create deepfakes of their political opponents, putting words into their mouths or placing them in embarrassing or humiliating situations. Online, disinformation actors have repeatedly spread AI-generated videos and images of politicians like Donald Trump, Kamala Harris, and even regional or local politicians saying or doing scandalous things.

The bill represents one of the most aggressive attempts by U.S. policymakers to protect the digital commercial rights of artists and public figures. New York, for instance, passed a law this month that requires film and television advertisers to publicize when they’re using deepfakes in ads, but does not create a similar copyright regime for artists’ likeness. A Tennessee law, The ELVIS Act, that prohibits the unauthorized use of an individual’s voice and likeness and creates secondary liability for large platforms that publish or distribute the content.

The NO FAKES Act faces opposition from an alliance of tech business and digital rights groups. They argue the bill  fails to balance the commercial rights of artists to control their own image with longstanding First Amendment constitutional rights to free speech and parody.

Amy Bos, vice president of government affairs at NetChoice, a trade association for online businesses, said that while her group supports legislation that prevents unauthorized AI generated deepfakes, “good intentions do not make good law.”

“As written, this bill creates a dangerous financial incentive for platforms to aggressively over-remove lawful content, burdens creators with an unworkable counter-notification system, and fails to deliver the uniform national standard its sponsors promised,” Bos said in a statement.

Many digital civil groups agree with that view. A broad coalition of policy groups – including the American Civil Liberties Union, the R-Street Foundation, the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others – wrote to the Senate Judiciary Committee this week to urge members to oppose the bill in its current form.

They argued the current bill creates a “Heckler’s veto” over most online content, allowing artists, public figures and advocacy groups to flood the notification system with takedown requests for content they don’t like. Similar to a law already on the books, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, virtually all the incentives in the bill push platforms to be overaggressive in taking down content, regardless of whether it violates the law or not.

This approach could end up quashing not just unauthorized ads but also scores of other likely First Amendment protected uses, such as education, humor, satire and parody.

In 2023, a humorous AI-generated image of Pope Francis in a puffy Balenciaga jacket went viral. Under the NO FAKES Act, the coalition says that post would be illegal for anyone to post until nearly 2100.

In the political arena, both Republicans like Trump and Democrats like California Governor Gavin Newsom have used AI deepfakes to skewer their political opposition.

“A law that undermines free expression will struggle to survive constitutional review,” the groups wrote. “In the meantime, it can do lasting damage, both to lawful speech and to the autonomy of the people it claims to protect. We urge the Committee not to advance the NO FAKES Act in its current form, to examine how existing state and federal law already addresses the legitimate harms the bill seeks to address, and to pursue narrowly tailored solutions only where a genuine gap remains. We would welcome the opportunity to assist.”

While the bill passed by voice vote and with broad support, multiple Republican and Democratic members of the committee said they had similar concerns and expressed a desire to continue tweaking the bill further before passage into law.

In the Senate meeting, Coons appeared to dismiss those charges, arguing that changes made to the bill ahead of markup adequately address any First Amendment concerns.

“I want to be clear, NO FAKES includes features that protect free speech,” Coons claimed. “Parody, satire documentaries, biopics, newscasts, they’re all protected and we built in appropriate counter notification processes and exempted research libraries and archives.”

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Former Mesa County, Colorado election clerk Tina Peters remained unapologetic in her first public interview since her prison sentence was commuted, reiterating many of the same conspiratorial beliefs about elections while vowing to recover her health and fight on in court to have her criminal record expunged.

In an interview with former Trump campaign manager and White House official Steve Bannon, Peters called it a “miracle” that Democratic Governor Polis commuted her sentence and defended him from “the horrible media and haters” who were critical of the move.

Peters said those critics “don’t go after murderers and people like that [Polis] chose to pardon but they go after me, so there is a concern there for my well-being and my safety.”

Although Polis has said that Peters expressed contrition for her crimes prior to the commutation, she complained in her interview with Bannon that the Colorado governor had refused to issue her a full pardon that would remove the conviction from her criminal record, vowing to continue to “fight” the matter in court using leftover legal funds.

“Even though Governor Polis reduced my sentence from nine years to four and a half years, I still have a fight to clear my name and bring the truth of why they came after me the way they did,” Peters said.

Peters was convicted of seven felonies and sentenced to nine years in prison for stealing another person’s identity and using it to break into Mesa County election facilities, turn off the cameras and take voting system data.

Polis’ commutation of Peters sentence, which came after two years of relentless pressure from Trump, was met with cheers from conservative allies and bitter criticism from members of his own party.

The Colorado Democratic Party censured Polis and banned him from participating in future state party events. Incumbent Senator Michael Bennet, D-Colo., is running to succeed Polis as the Democratic candidate for governor this year, potentially putting him in position to appoint his own successor in the Senate. 

In an interview with CNN, Bennet called the commutation a “terrible decision” and that after announcing it Polis called him to say he would not be interested in the job.

Bennet wasn’t surprised.

“I viewed the decision that he made with respect to Tina Peters as disqualifying, and I think he knows that,” Bennet said.

Following the commutation, Polis has defended his decision, claiming Peters was being punished holding incorrect but constitutionally protected beliefs about election fraud that were unrelated to her actual crimes. He recently showed up to a virtual gathering of Colorado Democrats wearing a piece of tape over his mouth and has predicted the commutation will be looked upon “fondly” in the future.

Reached for comment, Polis’ press office referred CyberScoop to a previous May 15 Facebook post by the governor announcing Peters’ commutation and a follow up Substack blog he posted on Sunday defending the decision.

In his Substack, Polis said he believes Peters committed “real crimes” and deserved her conviction, but also argued that her sentence had become disconnected from her crimes. He pointed to a Colorado Court of Appeals hearing last month that upheld her conviction but ordered her to be resentenced in court as evidence that her sentence was lengthened for her First Amendment protected beliefs.

“Tina Peters should be punished for what she did,” Polis wrote. “She should not receive additional punishment for what she believed or said.” Still trying to figure out what that would look

But many election officials have also publicly stated that Peters committed serious felonies, remains unrepentant for her actions, and that her conspiratorial beliefs played a direct role in motivating her crimes.

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