Appeals Court Rejects Trump Administration’s Last-Minute Bid to Halt California Ballot Count

Appeals Court Rejects Trump Administration’s Last-Minute Bid to Halt California Ballot Count
The fight over more than 20,000 California mail ballots has become a test of how far the federal government can go to police state-run elections—and how much urgency courts should grant a last-minute challenge.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the Trump administration’s emergency request to force California officials to set aside ballots linked to people the government suspects are noncitizens. The court said the Justice Department had not given the district court adequate time to consider the request, leaving the appeals panel without jurisdiction.

The conservative case centered on election integrity. The DOJ argued that federal officials have a sovereign interest in preventing ineligible votes from affecting federal elections. In a dissent, Judge Patrick Bumatay wrote that the government must have power to stop “this potential attack on the integrity of our elections.”

The majority, however, focused less on the alleged voters than on the administration’s litigation strategy. Judges Mark Bennett and Gabriel Sanchez said the claimed emergency was “self-constructed,” citing the government’s delay in filing suit and its attempt to intervene while California was already processing ballots. The decision did not resolve the underlying question of whether the listed voters were ineligible or whether the federal government could ultimately demand ballot verification.

That distinction shaped the competing political reactions. The DOJ portrayed the case as a necessary defense of election safeguards, while California officials and their allies described it as an unlawful federal intrusion into state election administration. The ruling was also framed as another setback for the administration’s effort to expand federal oversight before the midterm elections. The dispute may continue, but the immediate result leaves California’s ballot-counting process intact.