Supreme Court rejects Trump administration request to make California set aside about 20,000 disputed mail ballots

The Supreme Court on Monday evening rejected the Trump administration's request to force California to set aside thousands of mail ballots from people the federal government claims are not citizens, a decision that came hours before the final day of voting in the midterm elections, The Associated Press reported.

The court denied the Justice Department's request for an injunction in a one-line, unsigned order, with no noted dissents, CBS News reported. It acted on the emergency request without asking California election officials to respond. More than 6 million mail ballots had been returned to election offices across California, according to CBS.

President Donald Trump's administration asked the Supreme Court on Monday to order California to set aside thousands of disputed mail ballots, filing the emergency appeal the day before Tuesday's midterm elections, The Associated Press reported.

The Justice Department says it has identified about 20,000 people on California's voter roll who are "likely" not citizens and wants their ballots kept separate until their citizenship can be checked. "Once California commingles the challenged ballots with lawful ones, there is no way to get the challenged ballots back," Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in the filing, according to Axios.

Lower courts have turned the request down. U.S. District Judge David Carter denied it last month, and on Friday a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected it 2-1. Judges Mark Bennett and Gabriel Sanchez wrote that granting the request carried "a material risk" of disenfranchising voters and could jeopardize Los Angeles County's election, citing the long-standing principle that election rules shouldn't change on the eve of a vote, NPR reported. Judge Patrick Bumatay dissented.

California and Los Angeles County have argued that the federal list is unreliable and that building a new system to separate ballots while voting is underway isn't workable. NPR reported that the number of ballots actually in dispute is likely much smaller than 20,000, because county officials found many people on the list had no active registration and were never mailed a ballot. An analysis by UCLA's Voting Rights Project found that 42% of the names don't appear on California's current voter roll, and that the list includes naturalized citizens, according to NPR.

The case grew out of a Justice Department lawsuit filed Oct. 15 accusing California of impeding enforcement of the federal law that bars noncitizens from voting in federal elections.