Social Security Act
1935 US law creating Social Security retirement benefits, unemployment insurance and welfare aid.
Social Security records became the data source for national voter-roll checks in 2026. A 6-3 Supreme Court stay on 25 September reopened bulk SAVE searches of them by DHS, resting on immigration law rather than the Social Security Act.
Last refreshed: 1 October 2026
Timeline for Social Security Act
Mentioned in: Supreme Court revives DHS's SAVE checks
US Midterms 2026Mentioned in: D.C. Circuit keeps SAVE database offline
US Midterms 2026Background
Social Security files entered election administration in 2026. The citizenship data held for Social Security number holders made the agency's files the reference point for national voter-roll checks in 2026, and the Supreme Court's 25 September stay allowed bulk searches of them to resume.
The Act became law on 14 August 1935. It created old-age benefits for workers, unemployment insurance, and aid for dependent children, blind people and people with disabilities. Section 1106, added in 1939 and codified at 42 U.S.C. 1306, bars disclosure of information the agency obtains under the Act except as its regulations or other federal law allow. Breach carries a fine of up to $10,000, up to five years in prison, or both.
That disclosure bar is the Act's main point of contact with election law: any federal use of Social Security data to verify voters has to fit through one of its exceptions.
The Act's records feed citizenship checks
Because Social Security files hold citizenship data for most number holders, the expanded SAVE System matched voter rolls against them, and the Act's limits on disclosure became part of the fight. Judge Sparkle Sooknanan set the modified system aside on 22 June 2026. On 4 September the D.C. Circuit refused to revive it, holding that the government had forfeited its main Social Security Act argument by raising it only after judgment.
Bulk searching came back on 25 September, when six justices outvoted three and lifted the block on election offices' mass queries of the records. Its stay rested on IIRIRA, the 1996 immigration law, so the Act's own disclosure rule was never squarely decided. Before 3 November, the federal 90-day quiet period confines states to checking voters one at a time.