The fight over the Justice Department's ballot-segregation order moved into a federal appeals court on Sunday, in a rare weekend hearing held over Zoom. A three-judge Ninth Circuit panel took up California's challenge to the order covering some 20,000 mail ballots cast by voters the federal government lists as likely noncitizens — and the first question the panel pressed was whether a federal court has jurisdiction over the dispute at all.
Two of the judges questioned both the court's reach and the reliability of the list behind the order, while the third was more sympathetic to the government's position. The panel gave no ruling from the bench. The case now heads to a trial-level hearing on Tuesday, with the clock running: Los Angeles County alone has already processed about 331,000 mail ballots, and counties across the state are working under the 48-hour demand the Justice Department letters imposed.
— Previously posted on Saturday, October 24, 2026 —
The Justice Department's letters to California's county registrars are out. Dated Friday, October 23, and obtained by news organizations, the letters give each registrar 48 hours to commit to working with the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security to identify who on the county's own list "is a citizen and who is not" — and, for every voter whose citizenship cannot be confirmed, to "segregate — not cancel — those individuals' vote-by-mail ballots until their citizenship status can be determined." The letters cite the federal law against noncitizen voting, 18 U.S.C. § 611, and warn of legal jeopardy for officials who knowingly process such ballots. U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli put it plainly on Saturday: "Knowingly processing noncitizen ballots is a federal crime under 18 U.S.C. §§ 611 and 2."
The lists are county by county. The Justice Department says it identified 1,754 suspected noncitizens registered in Orange County, 1,355 in Riverside County, 1,133 in San Bernardino County, 902 in Santa Clara County, 407 in Contra Costa County, 334 in Ventura County, 180 in Santa Barbara County, 177 in Merced County, 81 in Santa Cruz County and 63 in San Luis Obispo County. Statewide, the department puts the number of "likely noncitizens" sent mail ballots at more than 20,000, says the names were manually verified against immigration files, and describes 20,000 as a floor that can rise. California officials dispute the list's reliability: an earlier federal flag of about 190,000 names was later narrowed to about 20,000, and Attorney General Rob Bonta has asked of the difference, "What happened to the 170,000? You just got those wrong?"
A U.S. Attorney's Office spokesman said the October 23 letters went to 57 of California's 58 counties — every county except Los Angeles, which had received the same demand on October 13 in a letter from Acting Deputy Attorney General R. Trent McCotter, accompanied by the county's list on a password-protected drive. In Contra Costa County, elections spokesperson Dawn Kruger said: "This letter came to us 11 days before Election Day with an unenforceable 48-hour deadline. Our office is conducting this election in accordance with federal and state laws and that is what we will continue to do." Counties have said they are processing ballots normally while their lawyers review the demand.
Bonta fired back on Saturday. He said the Justice Department acted at President Donald Trump's direction, telling MS NOW: "It is once again the United States Department of Justice politicizing and weaponizing the law to attack its enemies, and it is completely improper." His office declined to comment on the letters specifically. California officials have rejected the demand to set the flagged ballots aside, saying the federal government has not provided sufficient information about how it identified the alleged noncitizens.
The letters land on top of a court fight already running. On October 15 the administration sued California and Los Angeles County, asking a federal judge to block the state from counting mail ballots from the more than 20,000 flagged voters, and on October 16 the Justice Department warned Los Angeles County and state officials they could be liable as abettors of a federal crime if those ballots are counted. On Thursday the department asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to intervene. Separately, the department has charged 28 people it says voted illegally. Election Day is November 3, and under California's automatic vote-by-mail system the ballots were already in most voters' hands when the letters arrived.
The fight is the administration's second road to the same goal. The SAVE Act, which would require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections, passed the House of Representatives but has not passed the Senate and is not law. With that road closed for this election, the Justice Department is pressing the case county by county, eleven days out, under the existing federal ban on noncitizen voting.
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