Appeals Court Rejects Ballot Segregation Order

A federal appeals court on Friday refused to let the Justice Department force California to set aside ballots from voters whose citizenship is in question.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 against the request. The case is part of a wider dispute between Washington and Sacramento over how state elections are run. The administration alleges that California sent ballots to some 20,000 people who may not be U.S. citizens. It wants those ballots held back until citizenship is verified. State officials call the list unreliable and say it likely contains many citizens. A district court judge denied the request on Wednesday and warned that the demand could cost eligible voters their ballots. The appeals court found no clear error in that reasoning. "As the district court found .. there is no feasible way to identify and segregate the ballots of specific individuals without potentially catastrophic effects on the entire system," the panel wrote. Judge Mark J. Bennett, appointed by President Donald Trump, and Judge Gabriel P. Sanchez, appointed by former President Joe Biden, made up the majority. Judge Patrick J. Bumatay, also a Trump appointee, dissented. He wrote that California's refusal to separate the ballots encourages the "violation of federal law." "California says it can do nothing to prevent illegal voting," Bumatay wrote. He added that difficulty is no reason for courts to give up. Hundreds of thousands of ballots in California have already been processed. Elections officials say those votes are anonymized and cannot be traced back to voters. Millions of people in the state have already cast ballots ahead of Tuesday's midterms. Justice Department lawyers have said they plan to appeal, which would send the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. The department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling. Separately, a federal judge in Washington ordered the administration on Friday to share the disputed list of names with lawyers for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights and the UCLA Voting Rights Project. It marks the first time an outside group can examine the roughly 20,000 names. The two groups sued the Homeland Security Department in early October to stop it from using federal immigration data to challenge state voter rolls. Matt Barreto, faculty director of the UCLA Voting Rights Project, brought the suit. He said the outcome will decide whether the Justice Department can keep using such lists to intervene in state elections nationwide. "I think people should be on high alert" for further attempts at intervention, Barreto said. "They're not going to stop." A coalition of unions, including the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, also filed suit on Friday. They ask a federal judge to block the Justice Department from ordering local officials to stop counting ballots and from threatening criminal prosecution. Los Angeles County's top federal prosecutor, Bill Essayli, has warned that "any election official who knowingly processes the ballot of a noncitizen is opening themselves to legal jeopardy." The Associated Press obtained subpoenas issued Thursday to election officials in Los Angeles County. They seek documents and communications tied to federal letters sent in July and October about noncitizen voters. At least three L.A. County election officials must appear before a grand jury on Nov. 4, the day after the election.

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A federal courthouse interior with wood paneling and empty jury chairs, morning light through tall windows, muted tones, documentary realism, no people, no text or logos.