Judge freezes federal demands on 29 states' election records

A federal judge issued an emergency order on Friday evening that halts the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security from pressuring election officials across the country. US District Judge Trina Thompson granted a temporary restraining order in the Northern District of California. The ruling stops federal agencies from demanding that states segregate ballots or purge voter rolls while the order remains in effect.

Thompson, appointed by President Joe Biden, stated that federal actions intended to stop noncitizen voting are likely interfering with election administration. She found that these tactics risk disenfranchising lawful voters. The order explicitly prohibits the agencies from halting ballot processing or using threats to coerce officials into changing procedures based on claims of voter ineligibility.

The judge’s opinion directly contradicts the administration’s long-standing claim that it can prosecute state employees for failing to prevent illegal voting. Thompson wrote that state and local workers do not violate federal criminal law when they distribute, process, or count ballots according to established rules. This holds true even if a ballot belongs to a registered voter whom the defendants allege is ineligible.

The ruling imposes new reporting requirements on the federal government. Thompson requires the administration to notify her of any search warrant applications, grand jury subpoenas, or other demands for access to election materials. These demands must relate to lists the government created to identify potentially ineligible individuals. The order is set to expire on November 16.

A coalition of labor unions and civil rights groups, including the NAACP and the League of United Latin American Citizens, filed the case. The plaintiffs argue that the administration’s conduct violates the Voting Rights Act. They also claim the federal intervention is an unconstitutional intrusion into state control over election administration.

The dispute centers on a data-matching operation led by the Department of Homeland Security. This program compared state voter lists with federal records to identify suspected noncitizens. Election officials have criticized the resulting lists as unreliable, noting that they include US citizens. Several other judges are currently reviewing this approach in separate cases filed in recent weeks.

The federal government has intensified its efforts despite ongoing litigation. The Justice Department sent letters to 29 states and Washington, DC, threatening investigations if they did not preserve records and voter data from the 2024 election. Federal law already mandates that jurisdictions keep these records for 22 months after an election.

In California, a federal appeals court recently rejected the administration’s attempt to intervene in state citizenship verification. The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the federal government does not have the right to control how states verify citizenship status for ballot counting.