Appeals Court Rejects DOJ’s Challenge to Suspected Noncitizen Ballots in California

by the Epoch Times.com, October 29, 2026

A federal appeals court declined to intervene in the Trump administration’s lawsuit against California to sequester 20,000 mail-in ballots from individuals it suspects are noncitizens.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) filed an emergency application last week to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, asking it to block California from counting the ballots, but a three-judge panel handed down a 2–1 decision on Oct. 26, citing lack of jurisdiction to rule on the matter because a lower district court had not yet issued its ruling.

The complaint was first filed with the lower court on Oct. 15, after prosecutors said California had failed to meet a deadline to complete a review of 20,000 suspected noncitizens who had been sent mail-in ballots.

The majority of the federal appeals court, Judges Mark Bennett and Gabriel Sanchez, granted Los Angeles County’s motion to dismiss the appeal and denied the federal government’s emergency application as moot, leaving the matter pending in the lower court, which is scheduled to hold a hearing on Oct. 27. Judge Patrick Bumatay dissented.

According to the majority’s decision, the “United States failed to allow the district court adequate opportunity to consider” its lawsuit seeking to block California from counting the 20,000 ballots at issue.

Granting the DOJ’s emergency application would also cause confusion among California voters with about a week left before the Nov. 3 Election Day, Sanchez wrote in a separate concurrence from the per curiam opinion.

“Some may interpret [granting the DOJ request] as an endorsement of the United States’ currently unsubstantiated allegation that roughly 20,000 noncitizens are on California’s voter rolls. Voters may be dissuaded from voting because they could be wrongly labeled as voting illegally and would have to engage in any subsequent investigation,” Sanchez said. “Other eligible voters may have their votes denied altogether.”

Furthermore, granting the Trump administration’s request would pull election administrators away from their existing tasks to implement a new voter-citizenship verification process to align with the DOJ’s demands, Sanchez reasoned.

“At the eleventh hour, the United States seeks to shift the burdens of its priorities onto California and co-opt the State into carrying out the Executive Branch’s policies on a massive scale,” Sanchez said. “Even worse, the supposed emergency and last-minute attempted intrusion into a state’s election process is entirely of the United States’ own making.”

The Trump administration claimed to know for months about alleged noncitizens on California’s voting rolls, Judges Bennett and Sanchez wrote, but waited until voting in the Golden State had already commenced with counting of mail-in ballots underway for two weeks.

The Trump administration said it had unsuccessfully tried to “collaborate with California to prevent unlawful voting” for months, and that while it could have filed sooner, it waited until it had a refined list of names to “strengthen its case.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom welcomed the Ninth Circuit’s ruling in a post on X, accusing President Donald Trump of attacking the U.S. Constitution and American elections.

“Trump won’t stop trying to illegally seize power or deface our democracy,” Newsom said. “California will keep fighting back.”

Federal authorities indicated on June 5 that they were investigating potential voter fraud in California, as key races remained untallied for days after the state’s June 2 primary election.

U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli said California’s election system has critical vulnerabilities, including universal vote-by-mail without ID requirements, creating “conditions where fraud can go undetected and unpunished, eroding public confidence.”

The confrontation between California and the federal government over election matters escalated in the days following Oct. 15, when the Justice Department announced it had charged 28 noncitizens in the state with election-related charges, accusing them of fraudulently registering to vote. Authorities said most of them had cast ballots in U.S. elections.
 

All 28 are lawful permanent residents, otherwise known as green-card holders, meaning they have legal immigration status in the United States, but they are not citizens and not permitted to vote.

Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter said that all 28 individuals were part of the list of more than 20,000 suspected noncitizen registrants given to California already.

By Oct. 22, the Trump administration had filed an emergency application in the Ninth Circuit after the district court failed to rule by noon that day on its temporary restraining order—a deadline the government imposed the night before. The government had told the district court it needed a decision by Election Day on Nov. 3, and the court had already set a hearing for Oct. 27.

Letters from the DOJ dated the following day to county election officials in California gave them 48 hours to cooperate in helping clarify the citizenship status of suspected noncitizens registered to vote in the state and setting aside their mail-in ballots for further verification.

The Ninth Circuit held an emergency teleconference hearing on Oct. 25 to consider the Trump administration’s emergency request, during which the judges expressed skepticism over its bid while questioning their jurisdiction to hear the case.

Judge Bumatay argued in his dissent that the court did, in fact, have jurisdiction over the case because of the massive scale at which Californians vote by mail.

“According to the federal government, thousands of noncitizens are registered to vote in California,” Bumatay said. “Federal law precludes California from commingling ballots likely cast by aliens with legitimate ballots, because it encourages and induces illegal voting. Stopping that practice for those identified as likely noncitizens is the bare minimum.”

The DOJ did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication.
 

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