A federal judge in Los Angeles denied a Trump administration request Wednesday to immediately block California elections officials from counting the ballots of 20,000 voters whose citizenship the administration questions in a blistering opinion.
U.S. District Judge David O. Carter ruled that the administration’s allegations were “not credible” and that the intervention it sought would violate a host of federal laws, sow chaos in the ongoing midterm election, likely lead to the disenfranchisement of legitimate voters and foster future political meddling in elections.
“This request violates longstanding constitutional principles mandating that states have control over their elections,” Carter wrote. “If [the Trump administration’s] last-minute request for relief were granted, either party could create chaos for their own political purposes to disrupt the election process.”
Carter, an appointee of President Clinton, wrote that never 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,” and that, in bringing its suit, the Trump administration was asking the court to “believe that it reigns as a sole sovereign.”
“But California and its people are sovereign, too,” Carter wrote.
Carter’s ruling was the second to deny the Trump administration a temporary restraining order against the state and Los Angeles County this week, after a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied the government’s emergency request in a separate order Monday.
Carter ruled following a 3½-hour hearing Tuesday, where a slew of attorneys for the state, county and independent voting rights groups argued against the administration’s demands.
First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli — who is the top federal prosecutor in L.A. and argued for the Trump administration at Tuesday’s hearing — did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling Wednesday. After Tuesday’s hearing, he suggested the administration was likely to appeal Carter’s ruling if it didn’t immediately halt the counting of the flagged ballots.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
