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 9th 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 Monday, citing lack of jurisdiction to rule on the matter because a lower district court had not yet issued its ruling.
The federal appeals court dismissed the DOJ’s emergency motion and remanded the matter back to the lower court, which is scheduled to hold a hearing on Oct. 27.
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, the federal appeals court wrote.
“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,” the order 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, the majority of the judges wrote.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
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