Supreme Court Denies DOJ Bid to Freeze California Ballots

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to intervene in a federal dispute over California's voter rolls on Monday evening. The decision came just hours after the Department of Justice filed an emergency appeal. Election Day is Tuesday.

The Justice Department sought a court order to stop California from counting ballots from 20,000 registered voters. Officials labeled these individuals as likely noncitizens who had not verified their status. The department wanted the ballots set aside until citizenship could be confirmed.

A divided panel from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had already rejected this request on Friday. Judges Mark Bennett and Gabriel Sanchez wrote that changing rules so close to the vote created a material risk of disenfranchisement. They cited the Purcell principle, which discourages altering election rules on the eve of a vote. Judge Patrick Bumatay dissented in that decision.

A federal judge in San Francisco, David Carter, previously described the department's actions as a broad pattern of attempted election interference. Last week, he issued a temporary restraining order. This order bars the Trump administration from threatening or coercing state officials to halt the processing of these specific ballots. The federal government has appealed that order as well.

Data from the University of California, Los Angeles, Voting Rights Project suggests the number of disputed ballots is lower than the federal estimate. Researchers found that 42% of the names on the Justice Department's list do not appear on California's current voter roll. The analysis also identified naturalized citizens on the list.

The conflict has intensified in recent weeks. The Justice Department has sent subpoenas to California election officials and warned them of potential criminal prosecution. The state and Los Angeles County have argued that the federal list is unreliable and that creating a new system to segregate ballots is infeasible at this stage.