A federal appeals court on Monday dismissed the Justice Department’s emergency effort to force California election officials to segregate thousands of mail ballots that the federal government claims may have been cast by ineligible noncitizens.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled 2-1 that it lacked jurisdiction to hear the appeal, granting a motion by Los Angeles County’s top elections official to throw out the challenge. In an unsigned opinion, Circuit Judges Mark Bennett and Gabriel Sanchez concluded that the federal government failed to provide a lower federal district court an adequate opportunity to weigh its request for temporary relief. Judge Patrick Bumatay dissented from the panel’s ruling.
The majority justices criticized the Justice Department for filing its lawsuit less than three weeks before the November midterm elections and waiting until the previous week to seek a temporary restraining order while California election offices were actively processing ballots.
“The United States’s claimed emergency, at least in part, is a self-constructed one,” the 9th Circuit panel wrote, pointing to the department’s delay in bringing the action, its belated realization that existing state statutes govern ballot issuance and processing, and the sheer scale of California’s voter rolls.
Both concurring judges weighed in separately. Bennett, an appointee of President Trump, noted that even if the court had reached the merits of the case, he would have rejected the administration’s bid to compel California to segregate the ballots. Sanchez, appointed by former President Joe Biden, joined in the procedural dismissal.
In his dissent, Bumatay countered that the federal government holds a sovereign interest in protecting federal election integrity. “Simply, the federal government has a sovereign interest in safeguarding federal elections and ensuring that the votes of noncitizens do not undermine our electoral results,” the Trump appointee wrote.
California Governor Gavin Newsom welcomed the ruling, calling it a positive development and criticizing the administration’s legal strategy. The fast-moving legal fight began earlier in October after Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter dispatched letters to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder and County Clerk Dean Logan. The letters gave officials 48 hours to review a list of more than 20,000 registered voters identified by the Trump administration as likely noncitizens who had been mailed ballots.
Los Angeles County officials responded on October 15, stating that the federal letters lacked information on how the list was compiled and offered no guidance on how the county could legally verify citizenship status. County attorneys argued that the Justice Department was asking local administrators to engage in unlawful conduct. That same day, federal lawyers sued California, Weber, and Logan, alleging state officials failed to cooperate in identifying noncitizens.
The Justice Department asked U.S. District Judge David O. Carter to order California to segregate the mail ballots of targeted individuals and independently verify their citizenship before counting them. Although Judge Carter scheduled a hearing for a temporary restraining order, federal lawyers abruptly bypassed further district court proceedings and appealed to the 9th Circuit, arguing that the judge’s delay amounted to a constructive denial of emergency relief.
A three-judge panel held a rare Sunday oral argument session before issuing its decision. Ahead of the ruling, Los Angeles County had already processed an estimated 550,000 mail ballots for the midterm elections. County lawyers who analyzed a sample of 20,000 records containing county addresses found that a test review of 200 records showed 112 corresponded to inactive or canceled registrations where no ballot was mailed, with most of the remaining sampled individuals having never voted and more than a quarter listing a U.S. birthplace.
Federal prosecutors expanded the pressure on Friday by sending similar letters to at least 18 additional California county registrars demanding that ballots cast by suspected ineligible voters be set aside.
