9th Circuit Rejects Justice Department Appeal Over 20,000 California Ballots on Jurisdiction

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday denied an emergency request from the Trump administration's Justice Department to stop California election officials from counting about 20,000 ballots from voters whose citizenship the administration has questioned. The panel said it lacked jurisdiction because the district court had not yet ruled. The Justice Department had asked the court, after a Sunday afternoon oral argument, to order Los Angeles County to segregate those voters' mail-in ballots and hold them uncounted until citizenship was verified. In a 17-page unsigned opinion, Judges Mark J. Bennett, a Trump appointee, and Gabriel P. Sanchez, a Biden appointee, granted the county's request to dismiss the appeal. They said the government did not give the district court adequate opportunity to consider its request for a temporary restraining order, and the opinion called the claimed emergency partly self-constructed. Both judges wrote concurrences saying they would also have ruled against the administration on the merits. Judge Patrick J. Bumatay, a Trump appointee, dissented on the merits. A district court hearing is set to proceed.

The right-leaning article supplied, from The Daily Signal, does not cover this case. It reports a different ruling, the 5th Circuit's 10-7 decision that detained immigrants have no right to bond hearings, and frames it as a win for the Trump administration. Alternative and independent outlets had not reported the California ballot story at the time of writing, while left-leaning outlets had. Talking Points Memo leads with the judges' split and concurrences. It describes the list of alleged noncitizens as dubious and the effort as a scheme to disrupt the election. The Los Angeles Times uses more neutral language, saying the citizenship of the voters was questioned. It stresses the jurisdiction finding, the panel's composition and the district hearing going ahead.