Appeals Court Blocks DOJ Ballot Demands

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a 2-1 decision on Friday, denying the U.S. Justice Department's request for California to isolate and hold specific ballots. The ruling prevents the federal government from forcing the state to pause the counting of votes from approximately 20,000 voters whose citizenship status is disputed. The court determined that separating these ballots from the general pool would cause unmanageable complications for the state's election infrastructure.

The legal conflict began when the Trump administration alleged that California mailed ballots to individuals who may not be U.S. citizens. Federal officials demanded that the state set these votes aside until citizenship could be confirmed. California election officials responded that the provided list of names was unreliable and likely contained many valid citizens. A district court judge previously rejected the federal demand, warning that the process risked disenfranchising eligible voters.

The appeals court agreed with the lower court's assessment. The majority opinion stated that there was no feasible method to identify and segregate the ballots of specific individuals without causing catastrophic effects on the entire system. The court found no clear error in the district judge's reasoning. This decision stands as a setback for the administration's strategy to exert federal control over state-run elections.

Judge Mark J. Bennett, appointed by President Donald Trump, and Judge Gabriel P. Sanchez, appointed by former President Joe Biden, authored the majority opinion. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment regarding the ruling. The decision arrives with millions of Californians having already voted in the Tuesday midterm election.

Election officials noted that hundreds of thousands of ballots have already been processed. They emphasized that once votes are processed, they are completely anonymized. This makes it impossible to match returned ballots back to the specific voters who submitted them, complicating the federal effort to remove specific votes from the total count.

Earlier on Friday, a federal judge in Washington ordered the administration to share the disputed list of names with outside legal teams. The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights and the UCLA Voting Rights Project will now have access to the data. This marks the first time a nongovernment organization will evaluate the merits of the list of 20,000 names. These groups sued the Homeland Security Department in early October to stop the use of federal immigration data for challenging state voter rolls.

The plaintiffs argued that federal data-matching methods have previously mistakenly included thousands of citizens. They contended that the lists risk disenfranchising or deterring citizens from voting, particularly naturalized citizens. Prosecutors for the Trump administration counter that failing to count noncitizen votes dilutes the voice of citizens. They argue that there is just as much to lose from illegal voting as there is to gain from accurate counting.

A coalition of unions, including the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, filed a separate lawsuit on Friday. They seek a temporary block on the Justice Department's demands to stop counting ballots. The unions also want the department to drop threats to criminally prosecute officials who do not comply. The lawsuit accuses the federal government of interfering with election workers' ability to process votes.

Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, warned that any election official who knowingly processes a noncitizen's ballot opens themselves to legal jeopardy. On Thursday, the Associated Press obtained subpoenas issued to Los Angeles County election officials. These subpoenas request documents and communications related to letters sent by federal officials in July and October. They also seek information on efforts to prevent noncitizen votes from being counted.

At least three Los Angeles County election officials have been asked to appear before a grand jury on Nov. 4, the day after the election. It remains unclear whether the Justice Department intends to bring criminal charges against anyone. The department does not typically subpoena individuals it regards as targets of a criminal investigation to appear before a grand jury.