The Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to reverse rulings blocking segregation of over 20,000 California ballots from likely noncitizens, critics in the state call it federal overreach.
The Justice Department has asked the Supreme Court to temporarily block lower-court rulings that denied its request to set aside more than 20,000 California mail-in ballots cast by people it says are likely not U.S. citizens. Fox News reported the appeal followed back-to-back losses in federal court in Los Angeles and at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The department wants a limited injunction. Preserve the ballots while eligibility is checked. Do not cancel any votes. Once those ballots are counted and mixed with lawful ones, officials argue, the damage cannot be fixed.
In a court filing, the Justice Department put the stakes in plain terms:
"Once illegally cast ballots are counted and commingled with lawful votes, the resulting harm is impossible to remedy."
California disputes the claim. State officials say their safeguards against noncitizen voting are already strong, and they warn the federal list may contain errors that could lock out eligible voters. Lower courts sided with the state, citing its authority over election procedures and warning the request could disrupt an election already underway.
A federal judge in Los Angeles rejected the segregation request last week. U.S. District Judge David Carter issued a 26-page order refusing to force California to set aside ballots tied to more than 20,000 people the department identifies as noncitizens. Breitbart reported the ruling and the department’s immediate appeal.
Carter held that Congress never gave the executive branch the power it claimed. He also found that temporary segregation would clash with rules against systematic voter-roll removals so close to an election. The judge wrote that illegal voting should be handled through individual indictments, not mass ballot set-asides.
His order was blunt about who runs vote-counting:
"Washington cannot dictate how California counts its votes."
And he warned about the practical fallout:
"Granting the request would upend a vote already in progress, scare off the people running it, and discard ballots citizens had lawfully cast."
The department built its list by matching California’s voter file against immigration, passport, and Social Security records. Early estimates ran near 191,000 names before the figure was narrowed to about 20,000. That reduction did not satisfy the court.
The same integrity fight has already drawn federal action elsewhere, including a Justice Department case charging 64 foreign nationals with illegal voting ahead of the midterms.
On Friday the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the department’s bid as well. Judge Patrick Bumatay dissented. The majority left the lower ruling in place and kept the segregation order off the table while the larger case moves forward.
The lawsuit that started this fight was filed Oct. 15. It alleges California is blocking enforcement of federal law that bars noncitizens from voting in federal elections. The administration says the state violated the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, the rule that federal law prevails when state policy collides with it.
That Oct. 15 complaint sits alongside a wider federal push for access to voter rolls and warnings that officials who knowingly allow noncitizens to vote could face prosecution. A parallel pressure track showed up when the department issued California a 48-hour ultimatum over possible noncitizens still listed on the rolls.
Before the courtroom losses, Acting Deputy Attorney General R. Trent McCotter sent California Secretary of State Shirley Weber a letter demanding compliance inside 48 hours. Just The News reported that the department also handed Los Angeles County officials a password-protected thumb drive listing names believed to be likely noncitizens who had already been sent mail-in ballots.
The letter required two steps. Stop sending further ballots to people on the list until citizenship is confirmed. Segregate any returned ballots from those names and leave them uncounted until verification is finished. If the state refused, the letter said the federal government “will have no choice but to seek emergency relief.”
McCotter has also spoken publicly about the California investigation. The core demand has not changed: keep suspect ballots separate so the count can still be cleaned up if the citizenship claims hold.
Federal scrutiny of ballot integrity is not limited to California. The department has also ramped up a criminal probe tied to Alaska’s Senate ballot in a separate dispute over who belongs on the results.
California holds 52 House seats, most of them Democratic. Democrats need a net gain of only four seats nationwide to take control of the House. The state also carries a heavy Democratic edge in voter registration. Any dispute over tens of thousands of mail ballots therefore lands in a chamber already on a knife’s edge.
State officials frame the federal list as error-prone and the segregation request as a threat to lawful voters. The department frames delayed action as a one-way street: once ballots are mixed and certified, there is no clean remedy. Those two positions have not moved closer through the district court or the 9th Circuit.
California’s mail-ballot rules already stretch past Election Day. State law counts vote-by-mail ballots postmarked by Election Day and received within seven days, a window that survived a separate high-court fight earlier this year when the New York Post covered the 5-4 ruling allowing states to accept timely-mailed ballots that arrive after the election.
That earlier decision left California’s seven-day cushion intact. It also left election-integrity fights focused on who is on the rolls and whose ballots get counted, the same ground the current segregation case now occupies at the Supreme Court.
Related federal litigation has followed a similar pattern in other states, including efforts where the Justice Department sued to halt Alaska Senate certification over ballot eligibility questions.
The department is not asking the Supreme Court to throw out the 20,000 ballots today. It is asking the justices to pause the lower-court denials long enough for eligibility checks to finish without the ballots disappearing into a certified total. The case remains under review while that emergency request sits with the Court.
Lower courts treated the request as an intrusion on state election machinery and a risk to an election in progress. The department treats the same facts as a classic Supremacy Clause problem: federal citizenship rules for federal elections cannot be enforced if suspect ballots are already blended past the point of repair.
Judge Bumatay’s dissent at the 9th Circuit signals at least one appellate judge saw the irreparable-harm argument differently. The majority did not. That split is now part of the record the Supreme Court will see.
Earlier coverage tracked how the 9th Circuit again blocked the DOJ push to set aside the same pool of alleged noncitizen ballots, setting up the leap to the high court.
For voters watching from outside California, the mechanics are straightforward. Federal law bars noncitizens from casting ballots in federal races. The department says it has identified more than 20,000 mail ballots tied to people who appear on that wrong side of the line. California says the list is flawed and the cure is worse than the disease. Two federal courts refused to freeze the ballots. The Justice Department has taken the fight to the only court left that can reverse those blocks before the count is final.
Election rules only work when citizenship is verified before ballots are mixed past the point of return, and taxpayers should not have to accept “trust us” when the numbers run into the tens of thousands.
