The Radical Reading Room

The Ninth Circuit on October 26, 2026 dismissed the Trump administration’s emergency bid to stop California from processing mail ballots linked to a federal list of roughly 20,000 registered voters the Justice Department says are likely noncitizens. In a 2-1 ruling, the panel said it lacked jurisdiction because the district court had not yet had a fair chance to consider the government’s request for temporary relief. The court’s own opinion says the federal government appealed before the district court had issued any order on the request, even as voting was already underway and Election Day was less than two weeks away. Independent coverage from AP, Reuters, and the Los Angeles Times all reported the same bottom line: the appellate court would not grant the requested emergency intervention, and the case returned to the district court for a scheduled hearing on October 27. California officials likewise called the ruling an early legal victory, though the appellate court did not decide the merits of whether the ballots should ultimately be set aside.

The underlying dispute began on October 15, 2026, when the Justice Department filed suit after saying federal agencies had identified more than 20,000 California registrants as likely noncitizens. The department asked for an order requiring California to segregate or not count ballots from those voters until citizenship could be verified. The Justice Department’s public filing said it used Homeland Security and other federal data sources to compile the list, while California contested the reliability of the government’s methodology and the practicality of separating ballots once they had entered the mail-voting process. The court’s published opinion and the government’s own press release both confirm that the administration framed the case as an effort to prevent what it described as unlawful dilution of citizens’ votes.

What makes the matter significant is not only the election-law dispute, but the timing. AP and the Los Angeles Times reported that the panel pressed the government on why it had come to the court so late, after a district judge had already set a hearing for October 27. Reuters reported that the court’s ruling marked a setback for the administration’s broader push for a greater federal role in election administration in the run-up to the November 3 midterms. The Ninth Circuit’s opinion does not resolve whether federal law supports the government’s theory; it says only that the appellate court could not step in on this record at this stage.

A key counterargument, reflected in California’s filings and in the judges’ reasoning, is that the government sought a mandatory injunction without giving the district court enough time to build a factual record. California also argued that once ballots are separated from envelopes and returned into election processes, they cannot simply be re-labeled or resegregated on demand. The federal government, by contrast, argued that waiting would risk counting ballots that might later prove ineligible. Both positions remain in play. As of October 26, the only settled fact is procedural: the Ninth Circuit dismissed the emergency appeal, leaving the merits for the district court to sort out next.