Justice Department seeks to drop lawsuit over California noncitizen ballots

The U.S. Department of Justice asked a federal court on Friday to dismiss its lawsuit challenging California’s handling of roughly 20,000 ballots. The case sought to stop the state from counting these votes until immigration status was verified. The dismissal request comes days after the midterm elections and about a week before a hearing was scheduled to review the accuracy of the disputed voter list.

The lawsuit was filed in mid-October, shortly after ballots were mailed to all 23 million registered voters in California. By the time the suit was filed, hundreds of thousands of ballots had already been processed. Once a ballot is processed, it is anonymized, making it difficult to separate later. The Justice Department argued in its motion that by the time of the upcoming hearing, the state would have already mixed the challenged ballots with lawful ones. The filing stated that the relief the United States sought was no longer available, making voluntary dismissal necessary.

Judge David O. Carter, who presides over the case, had previously denied the federal government's initial request. Carter, appointed by former President Bill Clinton, issued an order warning that separating ballots at a late stage would risk disenfranchising citizens. He described the potential disruption as a measure that would wreak havoc on the midterm elections. The judge also appointed a special master in late October to evaluate the list of alleged noncitizens.

California officials have long maintained that the federal list of suspected noncitizens is out of date. They argue it includes legitimate voters. Carter echoed this sentiment in his earlier order. The state election officials reported that as of early Friday, the state had processed about 9 million ballots. Nearly 5 million ballots remained to be counted.

The Justice Department said it will continue to litigate suspected violations of election law in other cases. The department filed a motion in support of a separate lawsuit brought in May. That case alleges California violates national voting laws by failing to remove ineligible voters from its rolls. Bill Essayli, the top Los Angeles prosecutor, said the intervention is part of an effort to pursue every available civil and criminal remedy to ensure only eligible American citizens vote.

Kiersten Pels, a Justice Department spokesperson, maintained that California refused to cooperate with the federal request. She stated that thousands of likely noncitizens remain on the state's voter rolls and voted in the 2026 elections. In recent weeks, California prosecutors arrested more than 30 noncitizens accused of illegally registering to vote. Some of those arrested also faced accusations of voting in previous elections.