The Supreme Court swiftly dismissed an emergency request from the Trump administration on Monday, refusing to force California to isolate thousands of ballots that the Justice Department claimed may have been cast by noncitizens. In an unusually rapid response, the court issued a one sentence order denying the petition just hours after it was filed, offering no detailed reasoning or dissenting opinions. The move effectively ends a last minute attempt to interfere with the state’s ballot counting process on the eve of the midterm elections.
Solicitor General D John Sauer had argued that over 20,000 registered voters in California appeared to be noncitizens based on public records and sought what he called a modest remedy of setting these votes aside until their eligibility could be verified. However, this argument failed to gain traction in lower courts, including the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, which previously ruled that the federal government lacks the authority to dictate how states manage their own elections. That court suggested that any desired changes to mail in voting procedures should be addressed through Congress rather than the judiciary.
Legal experts pointed out that the timing of the appeal played a significant role in its rejection. Under a long standing legal guideline known as the Purcell principle, federal courts generally avoid altering election rules immediately before a vote to prevent chaos and confusion. With tens of millions of early ballots already cast across the country and many in California likely already processed, judges expressed concern that such an intervention would create a material risk of disenfranchising legitimate citizen voters.
While some members of the judiciary voiced concerns about protecting election integrity and enforcing laws against noncitizen voting, California officials and voting rights advocates maintained that the administration’s claims relied on shaky evidence. They argued that existing voter eligibility procedures were sufficient and that the Justice Department was overstepping its bounds. This latest defeat adds to a string of recent setbacks for the administration’s efforts to challenge state level election protocols via emergency appeals.