Appeals court rejects Trump DOJ demand to set aside 20,000 California mail ballots

By Jeremy Herb, Tierney Sneed, CNN

(CNN) — A federal appeals court on Monday rejected the Trump administration’s unprecedented attempt to force California to set aside votes from 20,000 people it claims are noncitizens.

The Justice Department’s lawsuit in California, filed earlier this month, is part of its escalating effort to insert the federal government into how states run their elections.

A three-judge panel on the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals denied the Justice Department’s emergency appeal following arguments in an unusual emergency Sunday hearing held via Zoom.

Judge Mark Bennett, a Trump appointee, and Judge Gabrial Sanchez, a Biden appointee, ruled that the appeals court did not have the authority to rule on the DOJ lawsuit before the district court had addressed the matter.

“The United States’s claimed emergency, at least in part, is a self-constructed one,” the majority wrote. “At least part of the delay here is attributable to the United States’s own delay in filing suit, in realizing that existing California state law governs the issuance and processing of ballots, in recognizing that California has millions of registered voters and processes ballots on a schedule aligned with that scale, and in communicating to the court its desired relief.”

A third judge on the panel, Trump appointee Judge Patrick Bumatay, dissented.

The decision sends the case back to the US District Court in California, where a Tuesday hearing is scheduled at 4 p.m. ET.

The Justice Department filed a lawsuit earlier this month seeking to prevent officials in California from counting more than 20,000 mail-in ballots associated with people the federal government says it believes are likely noncitizens. DOJ appealed to the 9th Circuit after the district court judge did not issue a ruling last week ahead of Tuesday’s hearing.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

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