President Donald Trump speaks during a dinner in the White House Rose Garden on Thursday, Sept. 17, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
For the second time in two weeks, the Trump administration has lost an appeals court challenge over an emergency effort to segregate mail-in ballots that could be cast by roughly 20,000 Californians.
The U.S. Department of Justice gave Los Angeles election officials a list of people the government described as “likely noncitizens,” many of whom reside in Los Angeles County. Local officials rejected the federal demand to remove those individuals from the voter rolls. Two days later, the DOJ sued, accusing California of “knowingly” enabling “unlawful voting.”
The case has moved at extraordinary speed because the midterm election is approaching. Counties across California began mailing ballots weeks before the lawsuit was filed, and many of those ballots have already been returned.
Last week, the DOJ urged U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, a Bill Clinton appointee, to decide by “noon” on Oct. 22 whether to grant an emergency request for a temporary restraining order, or TRO.
After that self-imposed deadline passed without a ruling, the Trump administration turned to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. The appellate court rejected the request, concluding that the government “failed to allow the district court adequate opportunity to consider its application.”
The dispute was therefore sent back to the district court.
At a hearing earlier this week on the request for an injunction, Carter voiced serious concerns about the government’s proposal to discard or set aside ballots cast by voters named on the list. The following day, he denied the TRO request in especially forceful language.
“This case is about the right of every American citizen to vote in a free and fair election,” the lower court order begins. “Never before in American history has the federal government, on the eve of an election, sought to coerce a state and local government to abandon their own Constitutional elections procedures and bend to the will of the Executive Branch. In bringing this lawsuit, the Executive would have this Court believe that it reigns as a sole sovereign. But California and its people are sovereign, too.”
With a direct denial from the district court—rather than the earlier “constructive” denial—the Trump administration appealed once more.
The 9th Circuit again declined to grant the government’s request.
The appellate panel characterized the application as seeking “substantially the same relief”: to “sequester the relevant ballots and establish a process to verify the citizenship status of those voters before counting them.”
The 9th Circuit also rejected challenges involving standing and jurisdiction, determining that the parties were properly before the court and that the court had authority to hear the dispute.
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On the substance of the case, the panel held that the dispute “focuses on California’s procedures for administering its elections,” meaning the Elections Clause of the U.S. Constitution is directly at issue.
The appeals court pointed to the clause’s relevant language:
The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.
The panel said the clause “expressly dictates” that California, like every state, “has the authority to prescribe the manner by which congressional elections are conducted.”
According to the 9th Circuit, the central issue is “whether California’s procedures for enforcing election requirements, such as the State’s statutory scheme for citizenship-based ballot challenges, have been preempted by Congress.”
After reviewing the statutory authority cited by the DOJ in its appellate filings, the court concluded that the Trump administration had not shown enough legal support for its position.
“Noticeably absent from the statute is an express preemption provision or any language setting forth regulations for how a state deals with citizenship challenges to vote-by-mail ballots,” the appellate court order reads. “Nor is there any provision authorizing the Department of Justice to take charge of or intervene in a state’s administration of an ongoing election.”
The order continues:
Exercising the power endowed to it by the Constitution, California comprehensively administers its elections, including by regulating voter eligibility. California law, like federal law, plainly prohibits voting by noncitizens…
Because Congress has not exercised the specific power granted to it under the Elections Clause to override California’s established laws for challenging ballots or removing ineligible voters, the State Legislature’s statutory scheme remains the only method to do so.
“We decline the United States’s invitation to contravene the Elections Clause by undermining the Constitution’s plain text,” the order states.
The post “‘Undermining the Constitution’s plain text’: 9th Circuit rejects Trump administration request to remove names from California’s voter rolls for the second time in two weeks” first appeared on Law & Crime.
