President Donald Trump addresses guests at a dinner in the White House Rose Garden on Thursday, Sept. 17, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
For the second time in as many weeks, the Trump administration has lost an appeals court fight over an emergency effort to separate mail-in ballots potentially cast by roughly 20,000 Californians.
The U.S. Department of Justice gave Los Angeles election officials a list of people it described as “likely noncitizens,” many of them residents of Los Angeles County. Local officials refused the federal request to remove the individuals from the voter rolls. Two days later, the DOJ filed suit, accusing California of “knowingly” enabling “unlawful voting.”
The case has moved at extraordinary speed as the midterm election approaches. California counties began sending mail ballots to voters 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 an emergency request for a temporary restraining order, or TRO, “by noon” on Oct. 22.
When the judge did not meet that deadline, the administration turned to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. The appellate court rejected the request, ruling that the government “failed to allow the district court adequate opportunity to consider its application.”
The dispute therefore returned to the district court.
At a hearing earlier this week, Carter voiced serious concerns about the administration’s plan to discard or hold aside ballots cast by voters appearing on the DOJ’s list. The following day, he rejected the TRO request in unusually 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 procedural setback—the Trump administration appealed once more.
The 9th Circuit remained unconvinced.
The appellate panel described the latest request as seeking “substantially the same relief”: placing the ballots at issue in secure custody and creating a process to determine whether the voters were citizens before the ballots could be counted.
The 9th Circuit also concluded that the parties had standing and that the case was properly before the court, clearing the way for a decision on the substance of the dispute.
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On the merits, the panel said the case directly implicates the Elections Clause because it “focuses on California’s procedures for administering its elections.”
The appeals court pointed to the constitutional language at the center of the dispute:
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.
That provision, the panel wrote, “expressly dictates” that California—like every other state—may set the rules governing how congressional elections are conducted.
The central issue, according to the 9th Circuit, is whether Congress has displaced California’s election-enforcement procedures, including its statutory process for challenging mail ballots based on citizenship.
After reviewing the statutory authority cited by the DOJ in its appellate filings, the court concluded that the administration had not shown that Congress had done so.
“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 goes on like this:
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 goes on.
The post ‘Undermining the Constitution’s plain text’: 9th Circuit rejects Trump admin request to remove names from California’s voter rolls for 2nd time in 2 weeks first appeared on Law & Crime.