A federal judge on Wednesday delivered a sharp rebuke to the Trump administration, denying an emergency request to immediately block California election officials from counting ballots submitted by 20,000 voters whose citizenship federal authorities have challenged. Government lawyers swiftly announced plans to appeal the decision.
U.S. District Judge David O. Carter declared the administration’s allegations “not credible” and warned that granting the requested intervention would violate constitutional principles, disrupt ongoing midterm voting, disenfranchise legitimate voters, and open the door to future political meddling.
“This request violates longstanding constitutional principles mandating that states have control over their elections,” Carter wrote. “If the [Trump administration’s] last-minute request for relief were granted, either party could create chaos for their own political purposes to disrupt the election process.”
Carter, an appointee of President Clinton, emphasized the unprecedented nature of the executive branch’s legal action, writing that never before in American history had the federal government attempted on the eve of an election to coerce state and local authorities into abandoning their constitutional procedures to bend to executive will.
Wednesday’s ruling marks the second major legal defeat for the administration in days. A three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a separate emergency request against the state and Los Angeles County on Monday. Carter’s decision followed a three-and-a-half-hour hearing on Tuesday featuring arguments from state attorneys, county officials, and independent voting rights groups.
First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, who argued the case for the federal government in Los Angeles, wrote on social media that his office had already filed a notice of appeal and would immediately pursue an emergency reversal in the 9th Circuit.
“Every day, more ballots are processed by election officials. This ongoing emergency disenfranchises American citizens through dilution,” Essayli wrote.
State leaders, voting rights advocates, and legal experts praised Carter’s ruling. Gov. Gavin Newsom commended the judiciary for standing up to executive overreach, while California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta called the decision an important victory for the rule of law and voting rights, though he noted that the broader legal fight continues.
Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan, named in the lawsuit alongside the state and Secretary of State Shirley Weber, said the ruling reinforced local efforts to balance election integrity with the protection of eligible voters. Anna Baldwin of the Campaign Legal Center, who argued before Carter on behalf of the NAACP and the League of United Latin American Citizens, stated that the court reaffirmed constitutional boundaries placing election oversight with states and Congress rather than the White House or Department of Justice.
Rick Hasen, director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at the UCLA School of Law, described Carter’s opinion as a comprehensive rejection of the administration’s legal strategy. The federal government lost on the law, the facts, and the weighing of harms, Hasen said, noting that the Constitution grants states authority over congressional elections unless Congress legislates otherwise.
The litigation stems from an Oct. 15 lawsuit filed against California, Weber, and Logan. The legal battle began three months earlier when Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin wrote to Weber alleging that more than 190,000 noncitizens might be registered to vote in the state. That claim was followed two days prior to the suit by a letter from acting Deputy Atty. Gen. Trent McCotter giving state and county officials a 48-hour deadline to segregate ballots for 20,000 voters on a newly refined list.
Throughout the proceedings, state and local officials have questioned the reliability of the administration’s data. L.A. County officials reviewed a subset of roughly 200 voters from the list and found that a substantial portion appeared to be U.S.-born citizens, a claim contested by Homeland Security. Registrars in other California counties also reported receiving smaller lists containing individuals who did not live in their jurisdictions or were not registered, alongside warnings of potential criminal penalties for tabulating those votes. State officials noted that similar lists had been rejected in other states, including Nevada.
During Tuesday’s hearing, attorneys for groups such as the NAACP and Mi Familia en Acción challenged the reliability of the data and questioned why the administration refused to disclose when and from whom it acquired the voter roll data used in its analysis.
Justice Department officials defended the 20,000-name list as a subset of individuals in whom they have high confidence of noncitizenship, describing it as the “floor” compared to the broader 190,000 “ceiling.” They argued that once cast ballots are unsealed or separated from envelopes, they cannot be re-segregated, necessitating an immediate court block.
Essayli explained during Tuesday’s hearing that federal authorities had purchased state voter registration records and supplemented them using commercial and law enforcement databases. However, administration officials acknowledged in sworn court filings that the data contained discrepancies and that more recent reviews showed some listed individuals possessed valid citizenship claims. Essayli conceded to the court, “We’re never going to stand here and tell you that everything is 100%.”
In his Wednesday ruling, Carter highlighted these unverified data compilation methods and the lack of clarity regarding outside databases, noting that similar administration lists had proven unreliable elsewhere. He also cited federal prohibitions against altering election rules on the eve of an election, pointing out that prosecutors retain the clear remedy of pursuing individuals who vote illegally rather than disrupting an ongoing vote.
“Eroded trust in our democracy is irreparable. Once a vote is segregated, lasting harm has occurred. If the Executive can discount votes and threaten an ongoing election due to unproven allegations, then our democracy is in danger,” Carter wrote, adding that Justice Department threats of criminal penalties against county election officials must stop.
Legal analysts suggest any subsequent appeal will face a challenging path. The matter is likely to return to the same 9th Circuit panel that previously denied the administration’s emergency request. While that panel ruled 2-1 on jurisdictional grounds that it could not intervene before a lower court ruling, both judges in the majority—Mark J. Bennett, a Trump appointee, and Gabriel P. Sanchez, a Biden appointee—wrote separately to indicate they would have ruled against the administration on the merits as well, citing constitutional limits on executive power over state-run elections.
