The U.S. Supreme Court on November 3, 2026, swiftly rejected an emergency request from the Donald Trump administration to block California from counting mail-in ballots cast by more than 20,000 registered voters whose citizenship status federal officials had questioned, Hindustantimes reported. Delivered on the eve of the U.S. midterm elections, the decision leaves the disputed ballots eligible to be counted and marks a significant legal defeat for federal efforts to intervene in state-run election administration.
Emergency Filing and Unsigned Order
The Justice Department approached the Supreme Court after lower courts refused to order California election officials to segregate ballots cast by individuals identified on a federal government list as potentially non-U.S. citizens. The administration argued that the ballots needed to be kept separate until the voters’ citizenship could be verified, warning that once commingled with lawful ballots, they could no longer be individually identified or retrieved, Outlookindia reported. The Supreme Court issued a brief, unsigned order rejecting the emergency request without offering any explanation of its reasoning. No justice publicly dissented from the decision, and the court did not request a response from California.
Lower Court Battles and Data Reliability Concerns
The legal dispute originated in mid-October when the Justice Department sued California and Los Angeles County officials, alleging the state failed to enforce a 1996 federal law prohibiting non-U.S. citizens from voting in federal elections. A federal district judge in Los Angeles, David Carter, rejected the administration’s request on October 28, questioning the reliability of the government’s data and warning that excluding ballots based on unverified allegations could disenfranchise eligible voters. Subsequently, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also refused to intervene, citing California’s primary authority over election procedures and the severe risk of disrupting the vote count.
Data Discrepancies and State Response
California officials strongly criticized the federal list, arguing it contained severe inaccuracies that could wrongly identify legitimate U.S. citizens as ineligible voters. Los Angeles County officials revealed that an examination of a sample of 200 registrations from the federal list showed that nearly 40 percent appeared to belong to individuals born in the United States. Furthermore, researchers working with the UCLA Voting Rights Project discovered that over 40 percent of the names on the federal list did not even appear on the state’s active voter rolls. California Attorney General Rob Bonta denounced the administration’s filing as an attempt to undermine elections and trample on the rule of law.
Constitutional Stakes and Broader Federal Implications
The case has highlighted deep tensions between the federal government and Democratic-led states over the division of authority in conducting elections. The U.S. Constitution assigns primary responsibility for determining the time, place, and manner of elections to the states, while granting Congress some legislative oversight. Acting U.S. Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter stated that the administration would continue pursuing legal avenues to enforce federal election laws. Although the ruling does not permanently settle the broader legal dispute regarding federal oversight in voter registration, it allowed the immediate count in America’s most populous state to proceed without federal disruption.