California voters have been casting ballots since early October through mail-in drop-offs, collection sites, and in-person centers, operating under standard state election laws that mandate the timely counting of votes. According to reporting from the Los Angeles Times, this established process triggered an emergency legal maneuver when attorneys for the U.S. Department of Justice requested that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals intervene to halt ballot processing.
Emergency Appeal to the 9th Circuit
On Sunday, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit convened for a rare emergency hearing requested by DOJ lawyers. The federal government argued it had only learned late Friday—through a filing by California’s Department of Justice—that Los Angeles County was actively opening and processing mail-in ballots, with approximately 600,000 ballots already handled. California Deputy Solicitor General Samuel P. Siegel characterized the federal claim of ignorance as “absurd on its face,” noting that daily tallies are published online by the secretary of state and public live camera feeds monitor ballot processing by election officials.
The Trump administration’s legal team pressed the appellate court to seize the case from a federal district judge who had already scheduled a ruling on their requests for Tuesday. The feds sought an immediate injunction to force Los Angeles County to set aside disputed ballots, arguing that once votes are tabulated, they cannot be uncounted if irregularities are later found.
Voting Rolls and Legal Indictments
The emergency hearing stems from a broader legal challenge initiated months ago, when the DOJ asserted it possessed a list of 190,000 individuals it claimed were improperly registered to vote in California. That figure has since been revised down to 20,000 names. Despite the government’s investigation, federal authorities have indicted only 28 individuals statewide, and legal questions remain regarding the viability of several of those cases.
During Sunday’s proceedings, appellate judges questioned whether the 9th Circuit held proper jurisdiction over state-run election procedures, invoking the 10th Amendment. On Monday afternoon, the panel formally denied the U.S. Justice Department’s emergency appeal on jurisdictional grounds, returning the case to the district court for a scheduled Tuesday hearing. Two of the judges, including a Trump appointee, noted they would have ruled against the administration’s request on the merits even if jurisdiction had been established.
Parallel Litigation in Washington
The timing of the California challenge coincides with a separate voting lawsuit in Washington, D.C., where plaintiffs represented by the UCLA Voting Rights Project are seeking a restraining order to prevent the federal government from compiling national lists of who it thinks should vote, and using janky, secretive information-gathering methods to do it.
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