The Justice Department filed a federal lawsuit seeking to block California from counting mail-in ballots from more than 20,000 suspected noncitizens.
The Justice Department sued California on Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, alleging that more than 20,000 noncitizens are unlawfully registered to vote ahead of the midterm elections, CBS News reported.
Why the federal government filed suit
The federal complaint asks the court to stop California from tabulating mail-in ballots from likely noncitizens in the upcoming federal election until their citizenship status is resolved. Federal attorneys alleged that the state made no serious effort to work collaboratively with the federal government to identify noncitizens registered to vote. Announcing the lawsuit, Attorney General Todd Blanche said, “State-facilitated voter fraud is unacceptable in the United States of America.” Blanche added that if California is found responsible in court, it will have undermined confidence in the electoral system and violated federal laws protecting representative government.
The lawsuit followed a confrontation between federal officials and local election administrators earlier in the week. Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter, whom Fox News identified as an acting deputy U.S. attorney, sent letters ordering counties, including Los Angeles, to inspect a list of suspected noncitizens who allegedly received mail-in ballots. McCotter enclosed a password-protected thumb drive containing names compiled by the Department of Homeland Security and gave the county clerk’s office a 48-hour deadline to review the list.
California officials reject federal list
California officials rejected the federal demand. Dean Logan, the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder and county clerk, said the county wouldn’t examine the thumb drive because doing so would conflict with established data privacy and information security protocols. Logan stated that the drive is not considered a secure medium.
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber said the Justice Department hadn’t provided her with the list of names. McCotter had also sent a letter on Tuesday warning Weber that the state had 48 hours to confirm whether anyone on the list received a ballot for the November 3 election. In that letter, McCotter wrote, “If you cannot implement this process by then, given the ongoing federal election, the United States will have no choice but to seek emergency relief.”
Weber responded on Wednesday, criticizing the federal government for relying on unsubstantiated claims and attempting to gain unlawful access to protected voter records. She noted that President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullen claimed in July that California had 190,000 noncitizens on its rolls, but federal officials refused to provide methodology or sources when her office asked for documentation. Weber said California maintains strict state legal requirements ensuring that only U.S. citizens register to vote and that ineligible registrants are removed.
Wider push against state voter rolls
The California lawsuit reflects a wider push by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division regarding voter registration records. In July, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon sent letters to all 50 states threatening criminal prosecution if they knowingly allowed noncitizens to remain on voter lists. The division has filed 31 lawsuits seeking unredacted state voter files, acknowledging plans to share those lists with the Department of Homeland Security to screen for noncitizens.
Federal prosecutors have lost 26 of those 31 cases and haven’t won any to date. As a result, the department has turned to publicly available voting lists and other investigative tools to locate suspected noncitizens.
Court rulings on voting rules and tools
The administration’s voter verification efforts have faced mixed outcomes in federal court during the lead-up to the election. On September 25, the Supreme Court granted an emergency order allowing states to use the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program, known as SAVE, to verify voter eligibility. That order put on hold a June decision by U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan, who had blocked the revamped SAVE system after finding it violated privacy rights and risked wrongfully removing eligible voters.
The administration expanded SAVE after Trump signed an executive order requiring a federal voter registration list and creating stricter rules for voting by mail. On Tuesday, a federal judge blocked the U.S. Postal Service from carrying out part of that executive order tightening mail-in voting rules ahead of the 2026 midterms.
