Supreme Court quickly rejects Trump effort to target alleged noncitizen voters in California

WASHINGTON — In a loss for President Donald Trump, the Supreme Court on Monday swiftly rejected the administration’s request that California separate out up to 20,000 mail-in ballots that officials allege could be submitted by noncitizens.

The court in a brief order turned away without explanation an emergency request filed just hours earlier by the Trump administration as part of an unusual last-minute flurry of election litigation. Lower courts had also ruled against the Trump administration.

The court acted so quickly it did not even ask California for its views first, as it normally does in such cases.

California officials had resisted the Justice Department’s intervention, noting that it is already illegal under state law for noncitizens to vote and expressing skepticism about whether the federal government’s information is accurate.

Separately, the administration has warned California election officials they could face prosecution if they allow noncitizens to vote. A federal judge on Saturday told the Justice Department to desist from making such threats.

Although elections are administered exclusively by local officials, the Trump administration says it has grounds to intervene because there is a federal law that prohibits voting by noncitizens.

Trump has long claimed, without evidence, that millions of noncitizens illegally vote in U.S. elections. Experts say that it rarely happens.

This has not stopped the administration from putting pressure on states to check the citizenship of voters, including by using a federal database.

But the effort has faced multiple setbacks. When the federal government said it had confirmed 185 noncitizens registered to vote in Nevada, the state responded that all of them were, in fact, citizens.

Thousands of mail-in ballots have already been submitted and processed in California. Once election officials check whether the ballot is valid by checking the voter’s signature against voter registration records, the details identifying the voter in question are discarded before the vote is counted. As a result, it would be impossible to retroactively determine which votes may have been cast by the alleged noncitizens.

In rejecting the Trump administration’s claims, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that there was no evidence Congress intended the federal law that bars noncitizens from voting to preempt state election laws.