The US Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration’s emergency request to prevent California from counting ballots cast by more than 20,000 voters whose citizenship status federal officials had questioned.
Lower courts had also rejected the administration’s challenge, with a judge questioning the reliability of the federal data and California officials arguing that the list contained inaccuracies.
The ruling is a setback for Trump’s efforts to intervene in state election procedures, although it does not settle the broader dispute over federal authority in voter registration.
The US Supreme Court on Monday rejected the Donald Trump administration’s emergency request to prevent California from counting mail-in ballots cast by more than 20,000 registered voters whose citizenship status federal officials have questioned. The decision, delivered on the eve of the US midterm elections, leaves the disputed ballots eligible to be counted and marks another legal setback for the administration’s efforts to intervene in how states conduct elections.
The Justice Department had approached the Supreme Court after lower courts refused to order California election officials to segregate ballots cast by people identified on a federal government list as potentially non-US citizens. The administration argued that the ballots should be kept separate until the voters’ citizenship could be verified, claiming that once they were mixed with other ballots, they could no longer be identified individually. The Supreme Court issued a brief, unsigned order rejecting the request, without explaining its reasoning. No justice publicly dissented.
Trump Administration’s Challenge Faced Resistance In Lower Courts
The legal dispute began in mid-October, when the Justice Department sued California and Los Angeles County officials, alleging that the state was obstructing enforcement of a 1996 federal law that makes it illegal for non-US citizens to vote in federal elections. The department sought to have ballots from the flagged voters set aside until their eligibility could be established.
A federal district judge in Los Angeles, David Carter, rejected the administration’s request on October 28. He questioned the reliability of the government’s data and warned that excluding ballots on the basis of unverified allegations could disenfranchise eligible voters. The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals also refused to intervene on Friday, with its majority citing California’s authority over election procedures and the risk of disrupting the vote count.
California officials have argued that the federal list contains inaccuracies and could wrongly identify US citizens as ineligible voters. Los Angeles County officials said an examination of a sample of 200 registrations from the list found that nearly 40 per cent appeared to belong to people born in the United States. Researchers working with the UCLA Voting Rights Project also found that more than 40 per cent of the names on the federal list did not appear on the state’s current voter rolls, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Dispute Raises Questions Over Federal Powers In Election Administration
The case has intensified tensions between the Trump administration and Democratic-led California over the division of authority between federal and state governments in conducting elections. The US Constitution gives states primary responsibility for determining the time, place and manner of congressional elections, while allowing Congress to alter those rules through legislation.
The administration has maintained that its request was limited to temporarily separating disputed ballots, rather than permanently preventing eligible voters from voting. California, however, warned that implementing the demand after voting had already begun could disrupt the counting process and risk excluding legitimate votes.
The Supreme Court’s decision comes as Republicans seek to retain control of both chambers of Congress in the November 3 midterm elections. Trump has repeatedly raised concerns about non-citizen voting, although confirmed instances of non-citizens voting in US elections remain rare, according to Reuters. The ruling does not resolve the broader dispute over federal oversight of voter registration, but it means the administration’s immediate attempt to set aside the California ballots has failed.
