A Ninth Circuit appeals court has blocked a federal request to isolate approximately 20,000 California ballots suspected of being cast by noncitizens. The 2-1 ruling leaves the final decision to a district judge just days before the November 3 election.
The DOJ's push to sequester 20,000 suspected noncitizen ballots
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) initiated this legal battle in mid-October, alleging that California failed to meet a 48-hour deadline to review a list of roughly 20,000 voters identified as probable noncitizens. According to the report, the federal government requested that a judge halt the counting of these specific ballots to allow for immigration status verification, arguing that such a move is necessary to prevent illegal voting.
The Trump administration contends that allowing these ballots to be mixed with legitimate votes creates an irreparable risk to the integrity of the election.. this effort represents a broader attempt by the federal government to exert more direct oversight over state-run electoral processes, though the report notes this strategy has faced several setbacks.
A 2-1 split between Judges Sanchez, Bennett, and Bumatay
The appeals panel in Los Angeles reached a divided conclusion on whether to intervene. Judge Gabriel Sanchez, a Biden appointee, and Judge Mark Bennett, a Trump appointee, formed the majority . Judge Sanchez argued that the administration had not provided the district court enough time to evaluate the request, while Judge Bennett suggested that altering California's voting rules while an election is already underway lacked constitutional backing.
In a sharp dissent, Judge Patrick Bumatay, also a Trump appointee, asserted that federal law strictly prohibits noncitizens from voting. Judge Bumatay argued that sequestering the 20,000 ballots was a minimum requirement to protect the election and criticized the court's hesitation to act swiftly.
Why Los Angeles officials claim the federal list is flawed
California election officials have pushed back against the DOJ's claims, suggesting the federal list is inaccurate. As the report says,Los Angeles election staff conducted a random sample of the immigrants identified by the DOJ and discovered that some of those individuals appeared to have been born in the United States.
This discrepancy led the majority of the appeals panel to warn that sequestering the ballots could inadvertently disenfranchise legitimate U.S. citizens. The judges expressed concern that the federal government's list was not sufficiently verified to justify the potential chaos of removing thousands of votes at the eleventh hour.
Whether the district judge can act before the November 3 deadline
The legal battle now returns to a federal district judge for a hearing on Tuesday. With the November 3 election date looming, the DOJ has a very narrow window to convince the court that the risk of noncitizen voting outweighs the risk of electoral instability.
One critical unknown remains: if the district judge does order the sequestration, the report does not clarify how California officials would physically identify and isolate these specific 20,000 ballots among the millions already being processed. Furthermore, it remains unclear if the DOJ has a more refined list of voters that could satisfy the court's concerns regarding the accuracy of the initial data.
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