A federal judge has prohibited the United States Department of Justice from intimidating or pressuring election workers to halt the processing of ballots.
The order, issued late Friday, also prevents the department from directing local election officials to separate or withhold ballots that federal authorities suspect may have been cast by ineligible voters.
The decision represents another setback for President Donald Trump’s administration in its attempts to increase federal influence over elections conducted by individual states.
It followed a ruling by a federal appeals court on Friday rejecting the Justice Department’s request for California to isolate disputed ballots cast in the ongoing midterm elections.
The administration had alleged that California distributed ballots to about 20,000 individuals who might not be American citizens. It asked the state to keep the affected ballots aside until the voters’ citizenship status could be established and prevent them from being counted in the meantime.
However, California officials challenged the reliability of the list, arguing that it was likely to contain a significant number of American citizens.
A district court judge had dismissed the federal government’s request on Wednesday, warning that implementing the proposal could deprive eligible citizens of their voting rights.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision in a 2-1 ruling, stating that identifying and separating ballots belonging to specific individuals could disrupt the wider electoral process.
“As the district court found – and we discern no clear error – there is no feasible way to identify and segregate the ballots of specific individuals without potentially catastrophic effects on the entire system,” the appeals court panel wrote.
The majority opinion was delivered by Judge Mark J. Bennett, appointed by Trump, and Judge Gabriel P. Sanchez, appointed by former President Joe Biden.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling.
However, defending its broader efforts to prevent noncitizens from voting, the department said in a statement: “Federal law prohibits noncitizens from voting. Enforcing that law is not an agenda item. It is the Department’s job.”
Millions of Californians have already participated in the midterm elections, which conclude on Tuesday, while election officials have processed hundreds of thousands of ballots.
Officials have also explained that once ballots have been processed, they cannot be linked back to the individual voters who submitted them.
Meanwhile, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, Bill Essayli, had warned election workers about the legal consequences of handling ballots cast by noncitizens.
“Any election official who knowingly processes the ballot of a noncitizen is opening themselves to legal jeopardy,” he said.
