Supreme Court Rejects Trump's Bid to Set Aside California Ballots in the Noncitizen-List Fight

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected the Trump administration's last-minute attempt to force California to segregate ballots cast by about 20,000 registered voters the federal government alleges may not be U.S. citizens, the Palm Springs Desert Sun reported in a story read in full by the desk this cycle. The court declined the Justice Department's emergency request on the eve of the Nov. 3 midterm elections, leaving California's existing ballot procedures in place as voters prepare to decide races that will help determine control of Congress. None of the justices publicly dissented.

The decision leaves intact the lower courts that refused the same request while voting was underway. U.S. District Judge David Carter rejected it on Oct. 28, writing: "Never before in American history has the federal government, on the eve of an election, sought to coerce a state and local government to abandon their own Constitutional election procedures and bend to the will of the Executive Branch" — and finding the administration had not shown a "credible" process behind its list. On Oct. 30 a divided 9th U.S. Circuit panel also sided with California, holding there is "no feasible way to identify and segregate the ballots of specific individuals without potentially catastrophic effects on the entire system," and pointing to the National Voter Registration Act's bar on systematic voter-roll removals within 90 days of a federal election. Circuit Judge Patrick Bumatay dissented, calling the government's request reasonable: "This solution would not cancel any vote but would allow time to verify the eligibility of suspected noncitizens."

The dispute centers on a list assembled by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and Homeland Security Investigations after federal officials obtained California voter-roll data during the summer; the Justice Department sued California on Oct. 15 under 18 U.S.C. § 611, the law prohibiting noncitizen voting in federal elections, arguing that once a challenged ballot is separated from its envelope and counted it cannot be retrieved. California, which also prohibits noncitizen voting under its own law, called the federal process for building the list "highly suspect" and pointed to its own safeguards. The underlying lawsuit can continue, but the administration did not obtain the emergency order it sought before Election Day: for California voters, the ruling creates no new requirement to cast or process a ballot on Tuesday. This story resolves the emergency request this station covered when it was filed (SQ-20261102-056).