9th Circuit Blocks Justice Department Bid to Freeze California Ballots

The federal government has intensified its legal push to control state election processes in the final days before the November 3 midterm election. On Friday, a federal appeals court delivered a major legal defeat to the Justice Department’s attempt to intervene in California’s vote counting.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a 2-1 decision rejecting the administration’s request for California to set aside approximately 20,000 ballots. The Justice Department alleged that these votes came from individuals who may not be U.S. citizens. The court wrote that there was no feasible way to identify and segregate these specific ballots without causing potentially catastrophic effects on the entire election system.

Judge Mark J. Bennett, appointed by President Donald Trump, and Judge Gabriel P. Sanchez, appointed by former President Joe Biden, authored the majority opinion. They affirmed a district court ruling from Wednesday that had already denied the request. The lower court judge warned that the federal demands risked disenfranchising actual citizens. A Justice Department spokesperson stated that enforcing the law prohibiting noncitizen voting is the department’s job and not an agenda item.

In a separate ruling earlier that same day, a different federal judge ordered the Trump administration to share the disputed list of names with outside legal groups. The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights and the UCLA Voting Rights Project will now examine the list of roughly 20,000 names. This marks the first time a nongovernment organization will evaluate the merits of the federal data. The government appealed that decision on Friday evening. Xavier Becerra, the Democratic candidate for California governor, serves as an adviser to the UCLA Voting Rights Project.

The legal battles extend beyond California. In Alaska, the administration issued subpoenas related to a spoiler-candidate controversy. In Washington state, officials received a list of alleged noncitizen voters. In Los Angeles, the U.S. Attorney’s office subpoenaed election officials regarding communications from July and October. At least three local officials were asked to appear before a grand jury on Wednesday, the day after the election.

A coalition of unions, including the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, filed a new lawsuit on Friday. They are asking a federal judge to block the Justice Department from demanding that local officials stop counting ballots. The unions argue that federal threats of criminal prosecution are interfering with the work of election staff. Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, warned that any official who knowingly processes a noncitizen ballot is opening themselves to legal jeopardy.

The 9th Circuit also ruled that federal investigations into past illegal voting by noncitizens in nine states must remain on hold until after Election Day. The panel, composed entirely of judges nominated by Democratic presidents, found that public investigations caused some citizens to avoid election-related activities out of fear. The judges noted that these probes can resume after the midterms conclude Tuesday.

Election officials in California have stated that millions of people have already voted and that hundreds of thousands of ballots have been processed. They maintain that processed votes cannot be matched back to the specific voters who submitted them. Kiersten V. Pels, a Justice Department spokesperson, wrote in an email that every ballot cast by an ineligible voter cancels out the vote of an American citizen.