Appeals court rejects Justice Department bid to block 20,000 California mail ballots

A divided federal appeals court on Monday rejected the Justice Department's emergency bid to force California to set aside mail ballots cast by roughly 20,000 voters the Trump administration calls likely noncitizens, sending the dispute back to a Los Angeles courtroom just a week before polls close in the November 3 midterms.

The 2-1 ruling by a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit did not resolve whether California must act on the disputed list. Instead, the majority found that the Justice Department had jumped to the appeals court, via a notice of appeal filed October 22 in the case, United States v. State of California, No. 2:26-cv-12025, before giving the trial judge, David O. Carter, a real chance to rule, and it dismissed the government's appeal for lack of jurisdiction. The underlying fight over the 20,000 names now returns to Carter's courtroom, where a hearing on the department's request for a temporary restraining order is scheduled for Tuesday afternoon.

A list on a thumb drive

The case began October 15, when the Justice Department sued the State of California, Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. The suit argues that counting ballots from voters the government has flagged as likely noncitizens would violate the federal ban on noncitizen voting, 18 U.S.C. § 611, and asks that those ballots be segregated and left uncounted until citizenship can be verified.

Days before filing suit, Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter's office delivered a password-protected thumb drive to Logan's office containing the names of more than 20,000 registered voters the government says it identified as likely noncitizens, giving the county 48 hours to review the list. Weber's office said the password was written on a sticky note taped to the drive, and that the state itself was never given the underlying list or told how it was compiled. In an October 15 response to the department, Weber's office said it could not verify the government's claims on that timetable, roughly three weeks before Election Day.

Los Angeles County's own spot check undercut the list's reliability. Of roughly 7,035 flagged records tied to county addresses, the county reviewed a 200-record sample and found that 112 belonged to registrations already canceled or made inactive, meaning no ballot had been mailed to them at all. Most of the remaining names had never cast a ballot, and more than a quarter listed a U.S. birthplace. McCotter has acknowledged the broader list likely contains errors.

Arrests and an unresolved emergency

The legal fight escalated on October 19, when federal prosecutors unveiled "Operation Protect the Vote," charging 28 people across California's four U.S. attorney's offices and arresting 11. All 28 defendants are lawful permanent residents — green-card holders with legal status but no right to vote in federal elections — facing felony counts of making false statements on naturalization applications or submitting fraudulent voter registrations, each carrying up to five years in prison. Prosecutors said all 28 appear on the broader 20,000-name list, and that at least eight allegedly voted more than once, including in California's 2026 primary.

California's attorney general, Rob Bonta, argued in a court filing that the arrests amount to a vanishingly small fraction of the state's roughly 23 million registered voters, and that the administration had supplied "no facts of any ineligible voters, just a conclusory statement with no evidence to back it." The case was initially assigned to Judge John Holcomb, a Trump appointee, then reassigned hours later to Judge Carter, who last winter dismissed a separate, earlier Justice Department suit demanding California's full statewide voter file — a dismissal now on appeal before the same Ninth Circuit.

When Carter did not rule by a noon deadline the department had requested, the government treated the silence as a "constructive denial" of emergency relief and raced to the Ninth Circuit rather than wait for Carter's scheduled hearing.

A divided panel, a self-made emergency

That maneuver is what the appeals court rejected, in a 91-page opinion issued after oral argument that ran more than two hours. Writing for the majority, Judges Mark Bennett, a Trump appointee, and Gabriel Sanchez, a Biden appointee, found that "the United States failed to allow the district court adequate opportunity to consider its application" for emergency relief, concluding, "for that reason, we lack jurisdiction over this appeal." The panel granted a motion by Logan's office to dismiss the government's appeal outright and denied its emergency request as moot. The majority also faulted the timing of the entire effort, describing the claimed emergency as, in part, self-constructed, pointing to the government's decision to sue less than three weeks before a general election already underway.

Judge Patrick Bumatay, also a Trump appointee, dissented, writing that "the federal government came to us for help as it sought to enforce Congress's law against illegal voting by aliens" and that California's handling of the ballots "frustrates federal law" by commingling them with other mail votes before any review. Bennett, writing separately, said he would have rejected the government's request on the merits as well, warning that siding with the department would carry a "real risk" of disenfranchising eligible voters in the process.

Reaction from Sacramento and the administration

California officials treated the ruling as vindication of a position they had staked out days earlier. In an October 20 statement responding to the department's initial filing, Weber's office called the government's legal theory one that "borders on the absurd" and added that California "will not abandon the sacrifices of those who fought, at great expense, for our right to vote."

At best, this litigation is a reckless political stunt.

Governor Gavin Newsom, in comments reported Monday, called the appellate ruling a "welcome speed bump" against what he described as the administration's broader attacks on democracy, and said the lawsuit was "just the latest step" in a pattern rather than an isolated episode.

The Justice Department did not withdraw its underlying claims. Separately from the California suit, federal prosecutors sent letters last Friday to at least 18 other California county registrars demanding similar reviews of voter lists, suggesting the administration intends to keep pressing the issue at the county level regardless of the appellate setback. The fight fits a broader pattern: the administration has pursued noncitizen-voting claims against roughly 30 states and the District of Columbia this cycle, including an earlier, separate suit against California's statewide voter file that Judge Carter dismissed in January, and a similar effort in Nevada where state officials determined that nearly all 16,000 names on a federal list belonged to actual citizens.

What happens next

The dismissal leaves the core dispute exactly where it stood before the Justice Department appealed: in front of Judge Carter, who is set to hear arguments on the department's temporary restraining order request Tuesday afternoon, with Los Angeles County alone still processing an estimated 550,000 mail ballots. The department could ask the full Ninth Circuit to rehear the jurisdictional question, though the panel gave it only until 7 p.m. local time Monday to do so, and it was not immediately clear whether it had. Whatever Carter decides, the ruling is likely to reach an appeals court again, with little room left before certification deadlines in a race that both parties have treated as a test case for how far federal authority can reach into state-run elections in the campaign's final days.