by WorldTribune Staff / 247 Real News October 28, 2026
An federal appeals court on Monday rejected the Trump Administration’s attempt to block California from counting more than 20,000 mail-in ballots the administration contends were sent to noncitizens.
The Department of Justice’s emergency application, filed last week to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, was denied in a 2–1. The court cited lack of jurisdiction to rule on the matter because a lower district court had not yet issued its ruling.
The complaint was first filed with the lower court on Oct. 15, after prosecutors said California had failed to meet a deadline to complete a review of 20,000 suspected noncitizens who had been sent mail-in ballots.
The majority of the federal appeals court, Judges Mark Bennett and Gabriel Sanchez, granted Los Angeles County’s motion to dismiss the appeal and denied the federal government’s emergency application as moot, leaving the matter pending in the lower court. Judge Patrick Bumatay dissented.
According to the majority’s decision, the “United States failed to allow the district court adequate opportunity to consider” its lawsuit seeking to block California from counting the 20,000 ballots at issue.
Granting the Trump Administration’s request would pull election administrators away from their existing tasks to implement a new voter-citizenship verification process to align with the Justice Department’s demands, Judge Sanchez wrote.
“At the eleventh hour, the United States seeks to shift the burdens of its priorities onto California and co-opt the State into carrying out the Executive Branch’s policies on a massive scale,” Sanchez said. “Even worse, the supposed emergency and last-minute attempted intrusion into a state’s election process is entirely of the United States’ own making.”
The Trump Administration said it had unsuccessfully tried to “collaborate with California to prevent unlawful voting” for months, and that while it could have filed sooner, it waited until it had a refined list of names to “strengthen its case.”
U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli said California’s election system has critical vulnerabilities, including universal vote-by-mail without ID requirements, creating “conditions where fraud can go undetected and unpunished, eroding public confidence.”
The confrontation between California and the federal government over election matters escalated in the days following Oct. 15, when the Justice Department announced it had charged 28 noncitizens in the state with election-related charges, accusing them of fraudulently registering to vote. Authorities said most of them had cast ballots in U.S. elections.
All 28 are lawful permanent residents, otherwise known as green-card holders, meaning they have legal immigration status in the United States, but they are not citizens and are not permitted to vote.
Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter said that all 28 individuals were part of the list of more than 20,000 suspected noncitizen registrants given to California already.
