Appeals Court Dismisses Justice Dept Bid Over California Mail Ballots
Seven Lights
A federal appeals court dismissed the Trump administration’s emergency appeal on Monday, refusing to require California to set aside mail ballots associated with more than 20,000 people the government suspects are noncitizens or illegal immigrants ineligible to vote.
In a 2-1 order, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals found that it lacked jurisdiction because the Justice Department had not given the district court adequate time to consider its request for temporary relief. The panel denied the department’s emergency motion as moot. Judges Mark Bennett and Gabriel C. Sanchez formed the majority; Judge Patrick Bumatay dissented.
The court also granted a motion by Los Angeles County’s top elections official to dismiss the effort. The federal government, the majority judges wrote, had failed to allow a federal district court “adequate opportunity” to consider the request.
The two majority judges faulted the Justice Department for filing its lawsuit less than three weeks before the November 3 elections and for seeking a temporary restraining order from the district court only last week, after California had begun processing ballots. “The United States’s claimed emergency, at least in part, is a self-constructed one,” the court said in an unsigned opinion, citing the department’s own delay and the state’s schedule for processing millions of ballots.
Judge Bennett, a Trump appointee, wrote separately that he would have rejected the bid even had the court reached the merits. Judge Bumatay, also appointed by Mr. Trump, dissented. “The question — does the federal government have the power to stop this potential attack on the integrity of our elections? Under both federal law and the Constitution, the answer must be ‘yes,’” he wrote.
California Governor Gavin Newsom called the ruling “a positive development and a welcome speed bump to Trump’s disgusting attacks on the Constitution and our country’s democracy.” The department this month sent letters to California counties pressing for voter-roll checks and records access, warnings that state officials contested. Lower-court proceedings on the government’s underlying claims continue a week before the midterms, in which control of Congress is at stake.