The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) appeared before a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Sunday, arguing for an emergency injunction to alter how California election officials process ballots. The federal government is seeking to force the state and Los Angeles County to segregate ballots cast by individuals on a contested list of approximately 20,000 registered voters whom the DOJ claims may be ineligible.
The emergency hearing followed a weekend of rapid legal maneuvers. Federal lawyers claimed they only recently learned that Los Angeles County was already opening and processing mail-in ballots. According to court filings, approximately 600,000 ballots have already been opened in the county. The DOJ argued that once a ballot is separated from its outer envelope, it becomes anonymous, making it impossible to identify which vote was cast by a specific individual if their eligibility is later successfully challenged.
California officials characterized the federal intervention as an 11th-hour attempt to disrupt standard election procedures. California Deputy Solicitor General Samuel P. Siegel argued that the DOJ’s claim of surprise regarding ballot processing was “absurd on its face.” He noted that California has been voting since early October, and that counties are legally required to count ballots in a timely manner. Siegel pointed out that daily tallies are posted online by the Secretary of State and that Los Angeles provides live camera feeds of its ballot-processing centers.
The litigation stems from a long-standing claim by the executive branch that undocumented individuals are being registered to vote in mass numbers. While the DOJ initially presented a list of 190,000 individuals it believed were illegally registered, that figure has since been narrowed to 20,000. Despite the scale of the federal investigation, only 28 individuals in California have been indicted by federal authorities during this effort, and several of those cases are reportedly under scrutiny.
The procedural tension escalated after the case was reassigned to U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, an appointee of Bill Clinton, based on his experience with the subject matter. The DOJ had previously sought a temporary restraining order from Judge Carter, who had scheduled a ruling for Tuesday. However, upon learning that ballot opening was underway, federal lawyers demanded a ruling by Saturday afternoon. When the judge did not meet that deadline, the DOJ appealed to the 9th Circuit, characterizing the lack of an immediate ruling as a de facto denial of their request.
During the Sunday hearing, the appellate judges expressed skepticism regarding federal jurisdiction over state-run elections. Several questions from the panel touched on the 10th Amendment, which reserves powers not delegated to the federal government to the states. The judges also questioned the reliability of the DOJ’s list of 20,000 names, which critics and state lawyers have described as error-ridden and derived from a mysterious, non-governmental third-party source.
This legal battle in California coincides with a related case in Washington, D.C., where the UCLA Voting Rights Project is seeking a restraining order against the federal government. That lawsuit aims to stop the creation of national lists of “suspect” voters, alleging that the government’s information-gathering methods are secretive and overreach federal authority. A ruling in the D.C. case is expected in the coming days, which could influence the 9th Circuit’s decision on whether the DOJ’s list is sufficiently reliable to justify an emergency injunction.
