{"id":504969,"date":"2026-10-23T03:30:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-23T03:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/504969\/"},"modified":"2026-10-23T03:30:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-23T03:30:10","slug":"trump-doj-appeals-california-ballot-case-before-judge-even-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/504969\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump DOJ appeals California ballot case before judge even rules"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Trump administration appealed<\/a> its California ballot lawsuit to a federal appeals court Thursday \u2014 even though the judge overseeing the case has not yet ruled on its request to block the counting of thousands of ballots.<\/p>\n

The Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a notice of appeal with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals after U.S. District Judge David O. Carter did not meet a noon deadline the department had requested<\/a> for a ruling on its emergency bid to stop the ballot counting.<\/p>\n

DOJ acknowledged in its filing that Carter \u201chas not ruled\u201d on the request but argued that, given what it called the \u201ccritical and exigent nature\u201d of the case, his silence amounts to a \u201cconstructive denial\u201d of its request for preliminary relief.<\/p>\n

The extraordinary procedural maneuver comes one week after DOJ sued California, Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Los Angeles County Registrar Dean Logan in an effort to stop election officials <\/a>from counting ballots belonging to more than 20,000 people federal agencies have identified as likely noncitizens unless their citizenship can first be verified.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, DOJ asked Carter to rule by noon Thursday, claiming that \u201cevery minute\u201d California continued processing ballots without segregating those belonging to federally flagged voters caused irreversible harm.<\/p>\n

California and Los Angeles County have sharply disputed that premise and asked Carter to dismiss the lawsuit entirely.<\/p>\n

They argue that DOJ lacks standing and has no legal authority to use 18 U.S.C. \u00a7 611 \u2014 a criminal statute prohibiting noncitizens from voting in federal elections \u2014 to force state officials to change how they administer and count ballots.<\/p>\n

California has also argued that Congress expressly authorized the attorney general to seek civil injunctions under other federal election laws but did not provide that authority under Section 611.<\/p>\n

The state and county filed those dismissal motions Wednesday, shortly after the case was transferred to Carter.<\/p>\n

DOJ\u2019s appeal does not point to an order denying its request. Instead, the department says Carter\u2019s failure to rule within DOJ\u2019s requested timeframe has the \u201cpractical effect\u201d of denying a preliminary injunction and is therefore appealable.<\/p>\n

The department initially filed its emergency request Monday and refiled it Wednesday after Carter granted its request to exceed the court\u2019s normal word limit.<\/p>\n

Whether the 9th Circuit will accept DOJ\u2019s characterization of Carter\u2019s silence as an appealable denial remains to be seen.<\/p>\n

For now, the district court has issued no ruling denying DOJ\u2019s request to intervene in California\u2019s ongoing ballot processing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Trump administration appealed its California ballot lawsuit to a federal appeals court Thursday \u2014 even though the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":504970,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8],"class_list":["post-504969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=504969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/504970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}