Ninth Circuit Dismisses DOJ Emergency Appeal Over California Ballots 2-1, Calling the Emergency Self-Constructed

A Ninth Circuit panel ruled 2-1 on October 26, 2026 against a Justice Department request for a court order requiring California election officials to segregate and not count the ballots of some 20,000 voters. The majority held it lacked jurisdiction because the government failed to allow the district court adequate opportunity to consider the request, and wrote that the United States’s claimed emergency, at least in part, is a self-constructed one.

DOJ’s lawyer said “Frankly, we did not appreciate the scale” of the ballots California was processing; Los Angeles County’s counsel answered “The numbers are publicly available.” Federal officials had initially told California this summer they believed the state had potentially more than 190,000 noncitizens on its rolls before the list narrowed to about 20,000. This is the appellate step in the sequence recorded at 2026-10-25–ninth-circuit-hears-doj-emergency-appeal-us-v-california-sunday-argument-jurisdiction-doubts.