Dem
53
Ties
1
GOP
46
As expected, U.S. District Judge for California's Central District David Carter denied Donald Trump's demand for a temporary restraining order requiring Los Angeles County elections officials to review a list of names provided by DHS that allegedly contain some non-citizens and set aside ballots already cast by anyone on the list until their voter eligibility could be confirmed. Besides the practical impossibility of that demand a week before voting ends, the judge found that the federal government has no legal basis to make such a demand and that the allegations were "not credible." At the same time, the federal government's interference would violate other federal laws like the Voting Rights Act, the National Voter Registration Act and the Constitution. The feds can't require a state to disenfranchise thousands of voters based on a mere suspicion that some people may be ineligible to vote.
Carter did not mince words, writing that never before "has the federal government, on the eve of an election, sought to coerce a state and local government to abandon their own Constitutional elections procedures and bend to the will of the Executive Branch."
The judge also pointed out that the DoJ acknowledged that none of this would affect the election's outcome. This admission means that there is no reason to prevent anyone from voting and that any legitimate concerns, if there actually are any, can be addressed in the normal course, after the election. Unfortunately, this is setting the stage for Trump's likely goal all along: challenging election results. And like clockwork, when the lawsuit didn't produce immediate results, the DoJ announced that they have opened a criminal investigation into California election procedures.
Election law expert and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA School of Law Rick Hasen said, "The federal government lost in every way it could possibly lose. It lost on the law, and it lost on the facts, and it lost on the equities—[or] weighing the harms to the various parties." But those small details won't stop this DoJ.
The DoJ appealed and, on Friday, the same panel on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals again rejected their request to disrupt California's election. It was the same makeup as before, with Judges Mark Bennett and Gabriel Sanchez in the majority. They repeated their earlier ruling that it's too close to the election and that the "United States has not made the required showing that such extraordinary relief, during an ongoing election, is clearly required by law."
Now that they have ruled, Trump will undoubtedly run to the Supreme Court on its shadow docket in one last ditch attempt to mess with California's election. At that point, we'll see just how much chaos the Republican majority wants to throw into the midterms. Judge Carter, anticipating such an emergency appeal, noted that if this kind of partisan interference is allowed this close to an election, that would open the door for a future administration to engage in similar tactics. "If [the Trump administration's] last-minute request for relief were granted, either party could create chaos for their own political purposes to disrupt the election process." In other words, in case you're listening SCOTUS, you wouldn't want President Newsom to feel he has carte blanche to rummage in Texas' elections, right?
Meanwhile, at the same time the Ninth Circuit was denying Donald Trump's request to order Los Angeles election officials to set aside certain ballots so the DoJ could confirm certain voters' eligibility, a different court issued a sweeping ruling prohibiting Trump and the federal government from engaging in any of these types of shenanigans anywhere in the country.
U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of California Trina Thompson ruled that "when state and local government employees perform the work of distributing, processing, or counting ballots or otherwise administering the 2026 midterm election" in accordance with the law, "they do not violate federal criminal law even if a particular ballot belongs to a registered voter alleged by Defendants to be ineligible to vote." As a result, there is no basis for the feds' threats to election officials of criminal prosecution for actions that are not illegal.
The case was brought by civil rights groups and labor unions, including the NAACP, SEIU, AFL-CIO and League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). It alleges that the feds' actions violate the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution. Judge Thompson agreed, finding that "although Defendants claim that their actions are designed to halt unlawful voting by noncitizens, their actions are likely to have the effect of interfering with election administration and disenfranchising lawful voters."
Her order is broad and prohibits the administration from demanding that officials segregate ballots, purge voters from voter rolls or discontinue ballot processing. She also ordered the government to stop any action to "threaten, intimidate or coerce" election officials into changing ballot processing procedures. She also required the feds to inform her of any subpoenas or search warrants demanding access to election materials or ballots. The order expires on November 16 and applies to all state and local election officials, not just California.
The court's reasoning matches the rulings from Carter in Los Angeles and from the Ninth Circuit. And it also aligns with the skepticism from the Alaska district court over the feds' attempts to halt the certification of the Senate race if their favored candidate loses. Democratic groups have filed a similar lawsuit in D.C. that is presided over by Judge James Boasberg. He held a hearing on Thursday on the groups' request for a temporary restraining order blocking Trump from threatening elections officials and pressuring states to set aside or reject ballots cast by certain voters. Boasberg said he would rule in that case tomorrow.
There is a notable consistency across district courts and appellate courts, from judges appointed by presidents of both parties, in the way they view the unprecedented effort by the Trump administration to interfere in the states' administration of elections. Hopefully, this pattern will continue when one of these cases reaches the Supreme Court. (L)