California asks federal judge to reject Justice Department bid to hold back mail ballots from 20,000 people it lists as likely noncitizens

California’s attorney general on Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026, asked a federal judge in Los Angeles not to issue an emergency order sought by the Justice Department that would require the state to segregate up to 20,000 mail ballots the federal government says may have been sent to noncitizens, CalMatters reported.¹ As of Wednesday afternoon, Oct. 21, no ruling had been reported.

What the Justice Department asks for

The United States filed its complaint on Oct. 15 in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, case No. 2:26-cv-12025. It names the State of California, Secretary of State Shirley N. Weber and Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean C. Logan as defendants.²

The complaint makes one claim: that sending vote-by-mail ballots to, and counting ballots from, people the federal government identified as likely noncitizens violates the Supremacy Clause, because federal law at 18 U.S.C. § 611 bars noncitizens from voting in federal elections. It asks the court to declare those actions preempted and to issue a preliminary and permanent injunction barring California from tabulating, in federal elections, vote-by-mail ballots from those individuals “until those individuals’ citizenship status can be verified.”² Federal officials announced on Oct. 19 that the department had asked for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction, CalMatters reported.¹

According to the complaint, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services compared California voter rolls with its own records using third-party software, checked naturalization, State Department and Social Security records, and referred the results to Homeland Security Investigations. A footnote says the work was done independently of the federal SAVE verification program, and that, to the government’s knowledge, California has not submitted voter rolls through SAVE. The complaint says the list of “over 20,000” people was provided on Oct. 13 and that the state “declined to work with the Federal Government to determine whether those individuals are citizens.” It says California mailed ballots on Oct. 1.²

California’s position

In a letter to Acting Deputy Attorney General R. Trent McCotter answering the department’s Oct. 13 letter, Weber wrote that the list holds the names of about 20,000 people statewide and “lacks both the detail and function to be of any investigative use.” She wrote that she would not disenfranchise thousands of Californians or order any county elections official to do so based on what she called an unsupported and likely inaccurate belief, and that the state would review any evidence, data or methodology the federal government provides. The letter says the list was presented to the Los Angeles County registrar, not to her office.³

In the Oct. 20 filing, Attorney General Rob Bonta wrote that “at best, this litigation is a reckless political stunt” and “at worst, it threatens to disenfranchise thousands of Californians this election,” according to CalMatters. The outlet reported that declarations from Los Angeles County officials described a preliminary review of 200 names on the list and said many of those people appear to be citizens.¹

In announcing the suit, Attorney General Todd Blanche said “state-facilitated voter fraud is unacceptable,” CBS News reported. The complaint says the federal government asked California to work collaboratively and that “California made no serious effort to do so.”⁴²

What the records do not show

• SignalData could not open California’s Oct. 20 opposition or the county declarations; their contents here are as CalMatters reported them.¹
• The complaint does not say how many of the listed people have returned a ballot, and no court has found that any person on the list is a noncitizen.²
• Neither the complaint nor Weber’s letter includes the list, and no hearing date or ruling appears in the records SignalData opened.²³¹