Judge Sparkle Sooknanan Fires Back After Court Rules to Ignore Her Ruling

“The Northern District of Florida court... erred in significant ways.”

The legal battle over President Trump’s election integrity initiative just escalated.

Judge Sparkle Sooknanan has refused to pause her ruling blocking the Trump administration’s expanded SAVE citizenship verification system, even after a federal judge in Florida ordered the Department of Homeland Security to restore the exact same system for four states.

The result is a remarkable standoff between two federal courts, with DHS now facing conflicting judicial orders over the same voter verification program.

Last month, Sooknanan ruled that DHS unlawfully expanded the SAVE database by allowing states to use Social Security numbers and bulk searches to verify citizenship for voter rolls and other government functions.

But because Florida, Indiana, Iowa, and Ohio had previously secured a court-approved settlement guaranteeing access to those tools, U.S. District Judge T. Kent Wetherell II ordered DHS to immediately restore the system.

Rather than pause her decision while the legal conflict is resolved, Sooknanan rejected the Trump administration’s request.

In her 23-page order, she accused the administration of engaging in “gamesmanship” by raising new legal arguments after judgment and insisted the Florida court “erred in significant ways.”

Sooknanan also argued that the Trump administration’s own actions created the conflict, writing that any harm DHS now faces is “self-inflicted” because officials entered into the Florida settlement while knowing this lawsuit was already pending.

Addressing the Florida ruling directly, Sooknanan wrote:

“The Northern District of Florida court... erred in significant ways.”

She further claimed the Florida judge had no authority to make an “implicit” determination that the SAVE program complied with federal law through approval of a settlement agreement.

For now, DHS remains caught between two conflicting federal court orders: one directing the agency to disable the expanded SAVE verification tools, and another requiring those same tools to be restored for four Republican-led states.

The legal showdown appears increasingly likely to end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, Rep. Abe Hamadeh has introduced articles of impeachment against Judge Sooknanan, while Rep. Nancy Mace has proposed legislation requiring federal judges, members of Congress, and Senate-confirmed officials to be natural-born U.S. citizens.