WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Washington on Monday, November 2, ordered President Donald Trump's administration to stop demanding that California election officials segregate ballots cast by people on the federal government's lists of suspected noncitizens. The preliminary injunction, issued on the eve of the midterm elections, came in a lawsuit brought by an immigrant-rights group and a naturalized U.S. citizen who challenged the administration's pressure campaign against state election officials.
Source: Reuters
Chief Judge James E. Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued the order in Trujillo v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security (No. 1:26-cv-03072-JEB). The injunction bars the Department of Homeland Security from "issuing demands to California elections officials to compel the segregation of ballots, or other deviations from existing state elections procedures, based on voters' inclusion on the lists of suspected non-citizens."
Source: Democracy Docket
"California may decide for itself what procedures to use for verifying the citizenship of registered voters," Boasberg wrote. "The executive branch lacks authority to unilaterally impose its preferred procedures." The court also held, as the Just Security litigation tracker summarised the ruling, that the government's "attempts to impose new procedures for counting ballots, through threats of criminal prosecution of state election officials, is unconstitutional."
Source: Just Security
Boasberg's order landed on the same Monday that the U.S. Supreme Court, in the companion case the Justice Department itself had brought against California, denied the department's emergency request to force the state to set the same ballots aside. Read the Supreme Court report
A list the judge found flawed
Boasberg agreed with the plaintiffs that the lists the administration compiled are flawed. The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA) "has identified multiple members who are citizens but are wrongly included on DOJ's lists," he noted, and data scientists working with CHIRLA found that the list contains naturalized citizens and people who are no longer registered to vote in California. Because election officials in some California counties are reviewing the lists, the judge found a "reasonable probability" that some officials might yield to the federal legal threats and "require additional citizenship verification from individuals on the lists before their ballots are counted."
How the fight reached five courtrooms
CHIRLA and a naturalized citizen filed the Washington case in September, challenging the administration's efforts to pressure California and other states to compare their voter rolls against federal databases in search of alleged noncitizen voters. On October 30, Boasberg ordered the government to hand the plaintiffs the list of more than 20,000 alleged noncitizen voters, and on October 31 the plaintiffs submitted an expert analysis of that list.
In the Justice Department's own lawsuit against California, filed on October 15, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter denied the requested relief on October 28, and a divided Ninth Circuit panel declined to intervene on October 30, with Judges Mark J. Bennett and Gabriel P. Sanchez citing the risk of disenfranchising eligible voters and the longstanding principle against changing election rules on the eve of an election, over a dissent by Judge Patrick J. Bumatay. Separately, U.S. District Judge Trina L. Thompson on Friday temporarily barred federal officials from threatening election workers with criminal prosecution for processing ballots. On Monday the Supreme Court denied the department's emergency application without giving reasons and without any noted dissent.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Boasberg's ruling, Reuters reported. The administration's position throughout the cases has been that federal law bars noncitizens from voting in federal elections and that its lists, built by cross-checking voter records against federal immigration and related databases, identify people who are likely not citizens and whose ballots should be held until their eligibility is verified — a claim the plaintiffs and California officials dispute, as an allegation the courts have so far declined to act on.
What is solid
- Every federal court asked in the California fight between October 28 and November 2 refused to order, or to allow the federal government to compel, the segregation of the challenged ballots
- Judge Boasberg found that citizens — including CHIRLA members — are wrongly included on the federal lists, along with people who are no longer registered to vote in California
What is only claimed
- The Justice Department says its list identifies likely noncitizens whose ballots should not be counted until citizenship is verified
- CHIRLA and California officials say the list is riddled with errors; the Justice Department has defended the list's accuracy
Why it matters beyond one courtroom
California's electorate includes millions of naturalized citizens — among them large Punjabi and Indian-origin communities in the Central Valley, the Bay Area, Sacramento and Los Angeles — and they are the voters most exposed when a name-matching exercise wrongly places a citizen on a suspected-noncitizen list: CHIRLA's co-plaintiff is himself a naturalized citizen. Nor is California the only target; the administration made a similar set-aside demand in Washington state covering more than 400 voters, and its broader hunt for alleged noncitizen voters has produced litigation in state after state this fall.
The injunction bars federal segregation demands while the Washington case proceeds, and the administration can appeal to the D.C. Circuit. California will count Tuesday's ballots under its own existing procedures. The Justice Department's own California lawsuit remains on appeal after the Supreme Court refusal, and parallel fights — including the Alaska Senate-race case, dismissed on November 1 and appealed the same day — will continue after Election Day.