Supreme Court Rejects Trump's Bid to Sideline California Ballots on Eve of Midterms

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday swiftly rejected the Trump administration's emergency bid to force California to set aside mail ballots from more than 20,000 registered voters the federal government claims are likely not United States citizens, handing the administration a sharp defeat on the eve of the midterm elections that will decide control of Congress.

The justices denied the Justice Department's request just hours after it was filed, without explanation and with no justice publicly dissenting. The court did not even ask California for a response before ruling, a step it ordinarily takes when an emergency application is taken seriously. The decision leaves California's existing ballot procedures in place as voters cast ballots on Tuesday in races that will determine the balance of power in Washington.

A last-minute challenge, rejected at every level

The administration had asked the court to order California to segregate any mail ballots associated with people on a federal list of alleged noncitizens and to hold them uncounted while the government challenged those voters' eligibility. Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the court the United States had identified more than 20,000 individuals who, in the government's view, appeared to be registered to vote in California based on publicly available information but were likely not citizens.

Every court to consider the request had already turned it away. United States District Judge David Carter rejected a temporary restraining order on October 28, writing that never before in American history had the federal government, on the eve of an election, sought to coerce a state government to abandon its own constitutional election procedures and bend to the will of the executive branch. The San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals refused the administration's request on Friday, with a panel including a judge appointed by Trump concluding that the federal government has no power to dictate to states how to run elections.

Why the list drew scepticism

The dispute centres on a list assembled by federal immigration authorities after officials obtained California voter-roll data during the summer. The Justice Department sued California on October 15, invoking a federal law that makes it a crime for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, and argued that California was impeding enforcement of that law.

California officials and the groups challenging the suit said the list was riddled with errors. Lawyers for the intervenors told the courts that the list was missing the voter identification number, described as the single most critical column for matching a name on a federal list to a registered voter. They warned that segregating the ballots could effectively disenfranchise lawful voters, including naturalised citizens whose records had not been updated. A 2-1 appeals panel agreed that forcing California to use the list could bar valid votes and jeopardise the Los Angeles County election, though one judge dissented and called the government's request reasonable.

A third Supreme Court loss on election cases

The ruling marks the third time this autumn that the Supreme Court has refused to intervene on the administration's side in an election dispute. In September, the justices rejected the president's plan to change how mail ballots are sent to voters across the country, a proposal election officials warned would have had severe consequences if imposed for this year's midterms. The court has, by contrast, sided with the administration in a series of other emergency-docket appeals this year, making Monday's rapid rejection stand out.

The administration has argued that segregating the ballots was a modest, temporary step that would still allow lawful votes to be counted once citizenship was verified. Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter said on social media on Monday that California had refused to work with the federal government to protect against noncitizen voting, which he said dilutes lawful votes. California officials countered that once challenged ballots are commingled with lawful ones, there is no way to separate them again, and that the state's own verification procedures already address eligibility.

What it means for Election Day

With the Supreme Court declining to intervene, California will not be required to create a special system to segregate the ballots before Tuesday's vote. Voting has been under way in the state since early October, with all of California's roughly 23 million registered voters mailed a ballot, and more than 6 million early votes already cast in the state alone. Nationally, early voting has already passed 54 million ballots, a record for a midterm cycle, according to the early-voting surge documented in recent days.

The decision also closes, for now, the most consequential of the election-eve court fights that have shadowed the final weekend of campaigning. In a separate ruling on Monday, a federal judge in Washington found that other last-minute demands on California election officials likely violated the Constitution's Elections Clause, which commits authority over election rules to the states and Congress alone. The administration had also sought a similar outcome for some 400 voters in Washington state.

The stakes beyond California

California's 52 House seats make it the largest single prize in Tuesday's battle for the House, where Republicans hold a narrow 218-214 edge and Democrats need a net gain of only three seats to take control. Democrats need a net gain of four seats in the Senate, where 35 seats are contested. The outcome in California, where several competitive House races could decide the majority, will therefore be watched closely, and the court's decision removes one source of uncertainty hanging over the count.

The broader fight over who runs American elections is unlikely to end with Monday's order. The president has repeatedly alleged, without evidence, that noncitizens are influencing outcomes by voting illegally, and his administration has pressed states for voter-roll data throughout the year. Election officials across both parties have said documented cases of noncitizen voting are exceedingly rare. For now, though, the courts have spoken in unison: on the eve of the midterms, the ballots stay in the count, and the rules stay with the states. The final weekend's ballot fights in Alaska, California and beyond now give way to the vote itself, and to a count that, in California at least, will proceed under the procedures voters have used all autumn.