A voter places their ballot in a secure box during early voting at La Sierra Library on October 30, 2026 in Riverside, California.
Gina Ferazzi | Los Angeles Times | Getty Images
The Trump administration on Monday asked the Supreme Court to appeal a case in which it unsuccessfully tried to block California from counting the mail-in ballots of about 20,000 voters who the Justice Department said might not be U.S. citizens.
The DOJ’s petition to the Supreme Court came three days after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit rejected the department’s attempt to block a lower federal court’s injunction, which allowed ballots to be counted.
The petition arrives a day before Election Day. The Supreme Court can act on the petition at any time, but there is no deadline.
The midterm elections will determine which parties will hold a majority in both houses of Congress.
The DOJ sued the State of California on October 15 in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. The civil complaint sought to block state election officials from tabulating absentee ballots “of likely non-citizens in the upcoming federal election until the voter’s citizenship status can be determined.”
The DOJ previously gave Los Angeles County officials a thumb drive containing the names of voters the department said might be noncitizens, who by law are not eligible to vote in federal elections.
Last Wednesday, Judge David Carter denied the DOJ’s request to order California authorities to void the mail-in ballots of the alleged named non-citizens. on a list prepared by the Department of Homeland Security and will not count their votes until their citizenship is confirmed.
“This case concerns the right of every American citizen to vote in a free and fair election,” Carter said in his ruling.
“Never before in American history has the federal government, on the eve of an election, sought to force a state and local government to abandon its own constitutional election procedures and bend to the will of the executive branch,” Carter wrote. “By filing this lawsuit, the Executive would have this Court believe that it reigns as sole sovereign. But California and its people are also sovereign.”
The DOJ then appealed this decision to the 9th Circuit, which denied the appeal.
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