Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate has agreed to permanently rescind a controversial 2024 list that flagged more than 2,000 registered voters as potential noncitizens, settling a lawsuit brought by the ACLU of Iowa and LULAC of Iowa on behalf of naturalized citizens who said they were wrongly targeted, according to the Iowa Capital Dispatch.
How the dispute began
The case dates to October 2024, when, roughly two weeks before the Nov. 5 election, Pate’s office issued guidance instructing county auditors to challenge the ballots of 2,176 registered voters identified as potential noncitizens – people who had at some point told the Iowa Department of Transportation or another government agency they were not U.S. citizens, but who had since registered to vote. Naturalized citizens who had become Americans after that record was created found themselves flagged and subject to challenge at the polls, even though they were fully eligible to vote. LULAC of Iowa and several individual naturalized citizens sued on Oct. 30, 2024, arguing the directive violated federal voter protections, including the National Voter Registration Act’s 90-day ‘quiet period’ barring systematic list maintenance too close to an election. Well after the 2024 election had concluded, Pate’s office ultimately acknowledged that at least 88% of the people on the list were, in fact, citizens who were fully eligible to vote all along, according to the Iowa Capital Dispatch.
Terms of the settlement
Under the settlement agreement reached in February 2026, the 2024 list can never again be used in future elections or for voter list maintenance or challenges, the Iowa Capital Dispatch reported. The agreement also bars the state from issuing any future voter challenge list within 90 days of an election based solely on DOT data – a direct response to concerns that the flawed methodology could resurface in a new form. The ACLU of Iowa said in a statement that the settlement corrects the state’s wrongful targeting of naturalized citizens for potential voter fraud, calling the original 2024 directive an example of the real harm flawed data-matching can inflict on eligible voters.
A separate, related fix
The settlement is linked to a broader resolution of Iowa’s data problems: in a related case resolved in December 2025, Iowa settled a separate lawsuit against a federal agency that secured the state 20 years of guaranteed access to the federal SAVE database – the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system also used by other states, including Texas, to check citizenship status. Under that agreement, Iowa gained access to SAVE within 90 days, in time for the state to use the database, rather than the discredited DOT list, for citizenship verification during the 2026 primary and general elections. With SAVE access secured, Pate’s office said it ‘no longer has need of’ the flawed 2024 list, which has now been formally rescinded. Pate told the Iowa Capital Dispatch in August that a repeat of the 2024 ‘potential noncitizen’ list is unlikely for the 2026 cycle now that the state has the more reliable federal database to draw on.
Diverging views on what went wrong
Voting-rights advocates say the episode illustrates the real-world harm of building citizenship-verification systems on incomplete government data, noting that the naturalized citizens swept up in the 2024 list did nothing wrong beyond becoming citizens after their driver’s license was issued. State officials have largely framed the settlement as a technical fix now that better data — the SAVE database — is available, rather than an admission that the underlying goal of verifying citizenship was flawed.
How Iowa’s case differs from other states
Iowa’s resolution stands out because it ends in an actual court settlement rescinding a challenged list, rather than ongoing litigation, as is the case with similar noncitizen-voter list disputes still working through courts in states like Texas. Election-law observers say the Iowa settlement could serve as a template for how other states resolve disputes over faulty citizenship-verification lists without waiting for a final court ruling.
What’s next
A judge has not yet formally entered an order finalizing the settlement, though the parties have jointly filed to dismiss the case on these terms. Once approved, Iowa’s move to the SAVE database is expected to govern how the state screens voter rolls for the 2026 midterms and beyond, with advocates saying they will monitor whether the new system produces fewer erroneous flags than the DOT-based list it replaces.
