Supreme Court rejects Trump administration petition regarding California ballots

On Monday, November 2, 2026, the United States Supreme Court dismissed an emergency petition filed by the Donald Trump administration. The petition sought to compel authorities in California to sequester more than 20,000 mail-in ballots due to unsubstantiated claims regarding the citizenship status of the voters. Despite a 6-3 conservative majority, the court issued a single-sentence ruling rejecting the request without explanation or disclosure of individual judicial dissents.

This legal action followed an earlier dismissal by a federal court in Los Angeles last week, which rejected a similar request submitted by the Department of Justice to California election officials. Furthermore, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington reached a concurrent decision, determining that the government's lists of allegedly ineligible non-citizen voters were inaccurate. Consequently, Judge Boasberg prohibited the administration from demanding further information from election authorities based on those flawed lists, effectively concluding this specific judicial attempt to invalidate the votes in the Democratic-leaning state.