Sparkle Sooknanan

A foreign-born, Biden-appointed federal judge whose recent demands apparently violated an approved court settlement of a lawsuit is insisting that she get her way anyway.

At issue is the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system, which Judge Sparkle Sooknanan in Washington ordered shut down for several states.

But Judge T. Kent Wetherell, in Florida, ordered those functions restored because that was part of a court-approved legal settlement in an earlier case.

The fight is profiled at the Epoch Times.

Sooknanon responded to Wetherell’s order, which was in response to her intervention in the dispute, with a demand that the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies keep the system disabled.

She had claimed, trying to reverse earlier court decisions, that the system violated the Social Security Act.

Wetherell pointed out that the procedures already had been adjudicated to be constitutional.

Sooknanan insisted that her judgment, that the Wetherall ruling was in error, be followed. And she insisted that the system shutdown be continued despite the existence of the settlement that already had been adopted and was being used.

WND reported earlier when Wetherell clarified what should happen as Sooknanan apparently deliberately violated a court-approved settlement in ordering the identification system suspended.

A report at Just the News said it was a “big win” for President Donald Trump, as the Florida order tells the Department of Homeland Security to restore voter verification features of the SAVE system.

The Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system is used by states to verify citizenship and immigration status, the report said.

Sooknanan had claimed across 75 pages of her opinions that the features violated the Social Security Act and Privacy Act. They didn’t, the federal court in Florida already had decided.

The Trump administration had expanded the system to “better support state election integrity,” the report said.

Wetherell’s decision pointed out that Sooknanan’s ruling violated a court-approved settlement with Florida and other states. He had approved the settlement last year and maintained jurisdiction the dispute.

“Defendants are plainly in violation of the settlement agreement because it is undisputed that they disabled the bulk-upload and SSN-search features that the agreement expressly required the SAVE system to have,” Wetherell ordered. “The fact that defendants disabled those features to comply with [the judge’s] order does not change the fact that they violated the agreement.”

Judge T. Kent Wetherell II held DHS breached a court-approved settlement by disabling the SAVE features after Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan’s ruling. He also expressly disagreed with her legal analysis, concluding the SSN-search and bulk-upload features do not violate federal law.

— SCOTUS Wire (@scotus_wire) July 7, 2026

A Gateway Pundit report called Sooknanan’s opinion a “crackpot ruling.”

“She whined that the federal government had ‘knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote’ and accused the administration of ‘haphazardly combined and repurposed’ data,” the report said.

It described how Sooknanan has “a long record of radical rulings,” such as blocking Trump’s deportation plans and shutting down an FTC investigation into far-left Media Matters.

Florida and multiple other states had reached a settlement with DHS last year requiring the SAVE system to remain functional.

Sooknanan’s demand that the program’s features be shut down prompted Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier to go back to court to have the settlement enforced.

“Plaintiffs’ emergency motion to enforce settlement agreement is GRANTED, and Defendants shall immediately comply … by reinstating Plaintiffs’ access to the bulk-upload and SSN-search features in the SAVE system,” Wetherell said.

‘Big win’: Joe Biden’s Judge Sparkle gets appalling election-integrity ruling canceled