President Donald Trump’s administration suffered a significant legal setback Monday evening after the Supreme Court rejected an emergency request to set aside thousands of California mail-in ballots over concerns that they could have been cast by noncitizens.
The ruling came just hours before Tuesday’s midterm elections, dealing a last-minute blow to the Justice Department’s efforts to prevent potentially ineligible ballots from being counted.
In a brief, unsigned order, the justices denied the administration’s request without explanation. No justice publicly dissented.
The administration had asked the high court to require California election officials to separate ballots associated with more than 20,000 individuals identified by federal authorities as suspected noncitizens.
The Justice Department argued that the ballots should remain separate until officials could verify the voters’ citizenship status.
California officials strongly disputed the federal government’s findings, arguing that the list contained significant inaccuracies and included eligible American voters.
The Supreme Court’s decision followed earlier defeats for the administration in federal district court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Federal Prosecutors Warn of Election Integrity Concerns
Speaking at a Monday news conference before the ruling, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli warned that even a relatively small number of unlawful ballots could influence closely contested elections.
“There are many close elections in our system here. We have elections that are decided by less than twenty votes within recent memory here in California,” Essayli said, according to The Daily Wire.
“It doesn’t take many illegal votes to corrupt our elections,” he added.
Essayli emphasized that the administration was not seeking to automatically discard every ballot associated with the federal list, but instead wanted an opportunity to determine whether those votes were legally cast.
“Our goal is not to charge all 20,000 people, our goal is to get California to not count the votes of noncitizens,” he said.
The prosecutor also announced six additional criminal cases involving green card holders accused of illegally registering to vote or participating in federal elections.
According to The Daily Wire, the defendants included an Iranian national accused of voting twice in 2024 and a Canadian citizen accused of voting in the 2022 and 2024 elections.
Essayli said federal authorities had charged 34 individuals identified through the government’s investigation with election-related offenses.
California Challenges Federal Evidence
Despite the administration’s concerns, federal judges repeatedly questioned the reliability of the government’s voter list.
According to the Los Angeles Times and federal court records, judges warned that separating thousands of ballots so close to Election Day could disrupt election operations and potentially prevent eligible Americans from having their votes counted.
A divided Ninth Circuit panel rejected the administration’s emergency request Friday, with two judges declining to order California to segregate the disputed ballots.
One judge appointed by Trump dissented, arguing in favor of granting the government’s request.
The dispute began in October when the Justice Department sued California after federal immigration and homeland security officials identified more than 20,000 individuals they believed were likely noncitizens registered to vote.
California officials maintained that the government’s findings were unreliable and that existing election safeguards should remain in place.
The Supreme Court’s refusal to intervene does not resolve the underlying legal dispute or establish that everyone on the federal list is eligible to vote.
However, the decision leaves the administration without the emergency restrictions it sought as voters head to the polls Tuesday.
