The Justice Department sued California on Thursday, asking a judge in Los Angeles federal court to keep election officials from counting the mail ballots of more than 20,000 people the federal government believes are likely noncitizens until their citizenship can be determined.
The complaint names the state, Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan as defendants. It came two days after acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter wrote to Weber and Logan, giving them 48 hours to review the names and to have local officials segregate the mail ballots of anyone whose citizenship could not be independently confirmed, the Associated Press reported. California mails a ballot to every registered voter. The federal government asked the state to work collaboratively to identify noncitizens on its rolls, the complaint says, but "California made no serious effort to do so" and began sending ballots to all registered voters in early October.
"This Court should enjoin California from presently tabulating vote-by-mail ballots from likely noncitizens in the upcoming federal election until the voter's citizenship status can be determined," the department wrote. It described that request as "commonplace election relief when a ballot is called into question," according to the AP.
"State-facilitated voter fraud is unacceptable in the United States of America," Attorney General Todd Blanche said in announcing the suit. McCotter said the complaint alleges "that California is facilitating unlawful voting by knowingly allowing noncitizens to vote," adding, "This needs to stop." Bill Essayli, the first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, said in the same release that state officials had been given a chance to remove noncitizens from the voter rolls and to sequester ballots returned by suspected ineligible voters. "They refused," he said.
The names come from a review by the Department of Homeland Security and its federal partners. Secretary Markwayne Mullin said they compared publicly available California voter files with federal immigration data, and he called the result a "preliminary analysis" that had identified "a significant number of individuals in California who are likely noncitizens and appear to be registered to vote." The analysis and review are still going on, he said. The complaint says the government cannot investigate every name before the election ends: "it is not practicable or feasible for the United States to investigate before the 2026 election concludes thousands, let alone tens of thousands, of individuals" flagged by two federal investigative offices, the filing states. By sending ballots to likely noncitizens after federal officials raised concerns, the department argues, California has "made it nearly impossible for the United States to investigate and enforce federal law," the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
The suit also marks a change in legal strategy. It was brought by senior officials in the deputy attorney general's office rather than the Civil Rights Division, ABC News reported, and it rests on the Constitution's Supremacy Clause and the federal law that bars noncitizens from voting in federal elections, according to the filing. The department previously sued 30 states and the District of Columbia to obtain their voter registration lists, and federal judges have ruled against it in more than two dozen of those cases, nearly all of which it is appealing, Bloomberg Law reported. The new complaint warns that people "also can be in violation of federal law for aiding and abetting, or otherwise facilitating, the federal crime of noncitizen voting."
The two sides also disagree over how the list changed hands. According to the complaint, a federal agent offered California officials an encrypted thumb drive containing the names, and the officials "rejected" it, which the department says showed "a total lack of commitment" to working with federal authorities, Bloomberg Law reported. Logan said he would not open the drive, which arrived with its password on a sticky note, because doing so would conflict with established data privacy and information security protocols. "We do not consider the device a secure medium," he said in a statement, adding that the letter did not specify how many people were involved or describe the records, ABC News reported.
Weber, a Democrat, rejected the demands in a letter on Thursday. "This is an emergency of the DOJ's creation," she said. The department, she wrote, was "demanding unprecedented measures that threaten thousands of Californians' right to vote, based on unverifiable information or methodology that you still fail to explain or provide," the AP reported. She said DHS had claimed during the summer that California had 190,000 noncitizens on its rolls but would not provide its methodology or data sources when her office asked, and she noted that voting is already underway. "California's election administration will continue to be governed by applicable federal and state law, not by unsubstantiated claims and outrageous demands," she wrote.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta said the state would not carry out the requests to withhold ballots and that his office would fight the suit. He pointed to the drop from the 190,000 figure DHS cited in the summer to the department's list of 20,000. "What happened to those 170,000? They just got those wrong," Bonta said, and he argued that the administration was violating a federal law that bars states from changing voter rolls within 90 days of an election, the AP reported. "They filed a lawsuit so we will respond in court," he said at an unrelated event.
Federal counts have shifted before. In Nevada, the number of registrants flagged as possible noncitizens fell from 15,903 to 185, and a state review found that all 185 were citizens.
The administration has made finding noncitizen voters a priority this year, and Mullin said in the release that "even one noncitizen vote cancels out the ballot of an American citizen and undermines our elections." Such cases are rare, the AP and ABC News have reported. The Justice Department has charged about 90 people with election misconduct so far this year, including 50 accused of voting as noncitizens, while the country had more than 227 million registered voters in the 2024 presidential election.
The federal list is also at issue in a separate lawsuit. The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, represented by the UCLA Voting Rights Project, had already sued the administration in federal court in Washington, and on Thursday it asked for emergency relief in that case. Its motion seeks a temporary restraining order that would stop federal officials from pressuring California election officials to block the delivery of ballots, and it argues that the federal data contains errors and may include naturalized citizens, the Chronicle reported. U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan had not ruled by Thursday afternoon. She ordered both sides to confer and file a joint status report by 5 p.m. Friday proposing a briefing schedule and saying whether a hearing is needed, court records show.