Photo via ABC News (US)

Appeals court rejects Trump admin's voting lawsuit against California

Read the original at ABC News (US) ↗
Cite

Mallin, A. (2026, October 26). Appeals court rejects Trump admin's voting lawsuit against California. ABC News (US). https://abcnews.com/Politics/appeals-court-rejects-trump-admins-voting-lawsuit-california/story?id=137586284

Dated from the outlet's own feed. Check the original for its byline.

ABC News (US) · collected 2026-10-27 · by Alexander Mallin

Quick Summary

A 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel rejected the Trump administration’s request for an immediate order demanding California separate approximately 20,000 mail-in ballots from individuals suspected of being non-citizens. The court ruled that it lacks jurisdiction at this stage and sent the case back to a district court, which will hear the matter on Tuesday.
Written by AI on 2026-10-30, from this article's own text only (the story summary below draws on all the coverage).

AI analysis

Story summary

On October 26, 2026, federal appellate judges questioned the Justice Department's demand for California to set aside 20,000 mail ballots from people suspected of not being U.S. citizens. The panel expressed doubt about the timing and constitutionality of this request during a rare weekend hearing. Despite initial setbacks, on November 2, Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ordered the Trump administration to stop demanding California officials set aside these ballots, delivering another setback to the DOJ's election oversight efforts. However, in an unusual legal twist, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals briefly lifted and then restored a block on the investigation into noncitizen voting in California hours before polls opened on November 3, setting up further legal battles.

Written for “Appeals Court Rejects DOJ Bid” on 2026-11-05, grounded in this article and the 42 other(s) covering the same event.

Story

📰 Appeals Court Rejects DOJ Bid
Politics · 43 article(s) covering the same event. Compare every outlet's account →

Compared with similar articles

This article reads leans left and hedges 25% of its claims. Each row says how that neighbour differs.
New York Post
Hedges 0 of 20 claims Outlet record 66/100
Al Jazeera
⚖️ Leans left Hedges 7 of 34 claims Outlet record 60/100
Washington Examiner
⚖️ Centre further right than this Hedges 0 of 3 claims Outlet record 69/100
Al Jazeera
⚖️ Leans strongly left further left than this Hedges 4 of 31 claims Outlet record 60/100
CBS News
⚖️ Leans left Hedges 5 of 32 claims Outlet record 65/100
The Guardian
⚖️ Leans left Hedges 1 of 4 claims Outlet record 66/100
CBS News
⚖️ Leans left Hedges 5 of 41 claims Outlet record 65/100
Toronto Star
Hedges 4 of 27 claims Outlet record 64/100
The Straits Times
⚖️ Leans left Hedges 2 of 22 claims Outlet record 66/100
How this article was measured signals, leaning charts, publisher record, byline, topics and claims

Signals How these are calculated →

Claims extracted
4
sentences that state something as happening or true
Uncertain
25%
1 of 4 hedged ("reportedly", "may", "according to")
Leaning
Leans left
of the writing, not the subject · beta estimate
Publisher signals
67/100
ABC News (US)'s corrections and hedging, across everything collected from it. Not a measure of accuracy.
Outlets on this story
43
Politics
Same framing elsewhere
1
articles that frame the event the way this one does
Analyzed 2026-10-30 · how these are computed

How this is being covered How these are calculated →

Article leaning vs. publisher reliability
Source leaning vs. consistency

Publisher

ABC News (US) · 1390 article(s) · 4 correction(s) detected
Running correction rate · 4 correction(s)

Who wrote this

Alexander Mallin
23 article(s) here · 1 carrying a prediction
🔮 We will not be intimidated by a sham investigation."
🔮 Judge says court will investigate government officials in DC golf course case The judge wants to know if lawyers tried to mislead her over Trump's plans.
🔮 Attorneys for former FBI Director James Comey are set to appear in court in Washington, D.C., Friday in their emergency push to have a federal judge dismiss the criminal allegations lodged against him by the Justice Department that accuse him of allegedly mishandling classified information more than a decade ago.
🔮 A House Democrat is asking congressional appropriators for guardrails that would prevent President Donald Trump from exploiting a loophole in federal law to buy the East Potomac Golf Course that he's been pushing to renovate with taxpyer funds.
🔮 "Never before in American history has the federal government, on the eve of an election, sought to coerce a state and local government to abandon their own Constitutional elections procedures and bend to the will of the Executive Branch," U.S .District Judge David Carter wrote in his Wednesday order.
🔮 Bill Essayli, a controversial Trump-installed leader of the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Central District of California, argued in the hearing that the administration was simply pushing for the state to be in compliance with federal law barring non-citizens from casting votes. But state officials and other legal advocates opposing the DOJ lawsuit countered that the litigation violated longstanding Constitutional principles mandating that states have control over their elections -- and could have chaotic consequences for the state in tabulating final vote counts in the weeks ahead.
🔮 I'm frustrated that I got it in the middle of the night, but I'm much more concerned that it's filed on the public record." The assistant U.S. attorney in the hearing, John Borchert, struggled repeatedly as Faruqui asked him to explain the government's conduct, which the judge said was unlike any case he had ever seen in the history of D.C.'s district court. Faruqui ultimately granted the request from Flores' and Benavides' attorneys to strike the amended complaint from the docket and said he would continue Tuesday's hearing to determine whether prosecutors established probable cause in their initial complaint filed last week. "Why today on this one case have you changed the entire history of how you charge cases?" Faruqui asked of Borchert.
🔮 She could not immediately be reached for comment on Tuesday.
🔮 "The United States seeks a court order to prevent Defendants from certifying the result of the November 2026 United States Senate election if '(1) [Dan S.] Sullivan does not win the election; and (2) had all votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan been cast instead for [Dan S.] Sullivan and Alaska's rank-choice process played out accordingly, [Dan S.] Sullivan would have won the election.'"
🔮 Appeals court rejects Trump admin's voting lawsuit against California The court sent the suit back to a district court, which will hear it on Tuesday.
Also by Alexander Mallin
Nothing else under this byline is closely related to this article, so these are simply their most recent.
All 23 articles by Alexander Mallin →

Topics

California Circuit Court of Appeals DOJ Trump the Justice Department

Subjects

California GPE · 2× Trump PERSON · 2× Circuit Court of Appeals ORG · 1× DOJ ORG · 1× the Justice Department ORG · 1×

Narrative

The 2-1 ruling from the panel said the appeals court lacks jurisdiction at this stage in the litigation, punting it back to district court which has a hearing set for Tuesday afternoon on the DOJ's lawsuit.
framing: mixed · carried by 1 article(s) · first seen 2026-10-30
🔮 Appeals court rejects Trump admin's voting lawsuit against California The court sent the suit back to a district court, which will hear it on Tuesday.
2026-10-30 · ABC News (US)
Appeals court rejects Trump admin's voting lawsuit against California · mixed framing

Claims (4 extracted, 1 hedged)

Appeals court rejects Trump admin's voting lawsuit against California The court sent the suit back to a district court, which will hear it on Tuesday. asserted
which → reject → Tuesday
A 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel on Monday rejected a request from the Justice Department for an immediate order demanding California segregate roughly 20,000 mail-in ballots from individuals the Trump administration claims are likely non-citizens. uncertain
administration → reject → individuals
The 2-1 ruling from the panel said the appeals court lacks jurisdiction at this stage in the litigation, punting it back to district court which has a hearing set for Tuesday afternoon on the DOJ's lawsuit. asserted
which → say → lawsuit
This is a developing story. asserted
This → develop → ?
💬Give feedback · no sign-in needed

No sign-in needed for now. Your note is sent without a name, so it cannot be answered.

🕘History 🎫Support