9th Circuit Court Blocks DOJ Effort to Separate Ballots in California

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a request from the Department of Justice on Friday.

The court blocked an effort to force California to separate disputed ballots received in the midterm elections. The panel voted 2-1 to deny the government's motion.

This ruling marks the latest legal setback for the administration of President Donald Trump. The government has sought tighter control over state-administered elections.

The dispute centers on a list of approximately 20,000 individuals. Federal officials claim these people may not be U.S. citizens. They want California to set aside those ballots until citizenship is verified.

California election officials argue the list is unreliable. They say it likely includes many people who are already citizens. A federal district judge previously dismissed the request. That judge warned the Justice Department's demands could strip voting rights from citizens.

The appellate court agreed with the lower court. "As determined by the district court and we do not see clear error, there is no viable way to identify and separate the ballots of specific individuals without potentially catastrophic effects on the entire system," the court wrote.

The ruling comes one day before voters go to the polls. Millions of Californians have already cast their ballots. Hundreds of thousands of those ballots have already been processed.

Election officials state that processed ballots are fully anonymized. They cannot be linked back to the voters who submitted them. The majority opinion was authored by Judge Mark J. Bennett, appointed by Donald Trump, and Judge Gabriel P. Sanchez, appointed by Joe Biden.

The Justice Department has not yet responded to requests for comment on the decision. Federal prosecutors have argued that counting votes from non-citizens dilutes the voice of citizens.

Xavier Becerra, the Democratic candidate for governor, advises the UCLA Voting Rights Project. That group is involved in a separate legal effort to obtain the disputed list.

A federal judge in Washington ordered the Trump administration to share the list with attorneys from the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights and the UCLA Voting Rights Project on Friday morning. This is the first time outside organizations will be able to examine the names on the list.

These groups sued the Department of Homeland Security in early October. They seek to prevent the use of federal immigration data to challenge state voter rolls. They argue such data often mistakenly includes naturalized citizens who have the legal right to vote.