Supreme Court declines to hold California ballots pending citizenship checks

Millions of Californians will have their ballots counted as normal in the upcoming midterms after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a last-minute federal request to hold thousands of votes pending a citizenship review. The decision arrived Monday, just hours before the deadline for casting ballots in the election that will determine control of Congress for the final two years of President Donald Trump's second term.

The administration sought to force the state to segregate approximately 20,000 ballots from individuals it identified as likely noncitizens. The high court refused to intervene in the case, marking the latest defeat for the executive branch's efforts to alter the voting process before results are tallied. No justices issued a public dissent in the emergency ruling.

California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, announced the outcome on social media shortly after the decision. "The Court rejected Trump’s emergency request without even asking the other side to respond," Newsom wrote. "Democracy won."

The Supreme Court did not provide a detailed written explanation for its decision, a common practice for emergency applications. This follows a series of lower court losses for the Justice Department, which previously argued that the ballots should be set aside until voter status was verified. A federal judge in the Ninth Circuit had earlier dismissed a related suit aimed at preventing a potential Democratic Senate victory in Alaska without holding a hearing.

State and federal officials have disputed the reliability of the administration's data. California Attorney General Rob Bonta noted that courts have now rejected the administration's attempts to interfere with the state's elections four times. "This latest decision should put an end to the Administration’s attempt to disrupt California’s elections through emergency court orders," Bonta said in a statement.

While the administration maintains that segregating the ballots is a modest step that would allow legal votes to be counted, critics point to the timing and data quality. Judge Trina Thompson, a U.S. District Court judge in San Francisco, pressed a Justice Department attorney on the error rate in the government's list. The attorney, Kenneth Kao, acknowledged that there was a high error rate. Bill Essayli, the federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, expressed confidence that the individuals on the list were not entitled to vote, while conceding that some errors may exist.

Voting began in early October for California's roughly 23 million registered voters. More than 6 million ballots have already been returned, according to Associated Press election data. Election officials stated that physically separating the challenged ballots at this stage would be logistically difficult. A separate federal judge, Chief Judge James Boasberg, also ruled against the administration's efforts to make last-minute demands of state officials, finding that such actions likely violated the U.S. Constitution.