Follow-Up: Justice Department Drops California Ballot Lawsuit; Bonta Says Federal Government Gave Up After Four Court Losses
California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced in Oakland on November 6 that the federal government has dropped a lawsuit that sought to force California election officials to set aside and not count mail-in ballots that may be cast by people on a list of approximately 20,000 individuals the U.S. Department of Justice believes are likely noncitizens.
Bonta's office said the Department of Justice chose to voluntarily dismiss its case after four consecutive court losses, rather than face a court-ordered evidentiary hearing before Judge David Carter next Friday, November 13, to scrutinize the reliability of its list. Courts in other cases have raised concerns about the reliability of similar lists, and a Department of Justice attorney in another case recently acknowledged that its lists have a high error rate.
"Next week, the Trump Administration would have faced tough questions in court about its list of suspected noncitizens. Rather than face that scrutiny, it chose to drop its case," Bonta said. "After four court defeats in just one week, including at the U.S. Supreme Court, the federal government has now thrown in the towel. California stood firm and prevailed, and the nationwide election results made clear that Americans overwhelmingly reject the Trump Administration's anti-democratic agenda. California will always stand up for our democracy and the rule of law."
Bonta's office said the U.S. Constitution gives States and Congress, not the President or the Executive Branch, the authority to regulate the time, place, and manner of elections, and that the Administration's repeated attempts to undermine that constitutional authority were decisively rejected by four courts in one week.
The timeline of the four rejections is as follows: on Monday, October 26, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit dismissed the federal government's first emergency appeal after it attempted to bypass the district court; on Wednesday, October 28, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California denied the Administration's request for a temporary restraining order; on Friday, October 30, the Ninth Circuit denied its emergency motion for an injunction pending appeal; and on Monday, November 2, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected its emergency application seeking to force California election officials to segregate and not count the mail-in ballots at issue.
The dismissal is the latest development in the California voter-list litigation that GSM has been following; earlier developments are listed in the event timeline on this page.
(Source: California Attorney General's Office)
Source: California Attorney General's Office
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：加州总检察长罗布·邦塔官方肖像。Douglas Despres／加州总检察长办公室摄，公共领域，经 Wikimedia Commons（GSM 加州固定图库，横幅裁切、人物完整）。 / Photo: Official portrait of California Attorney General Rob Bonta. Photo by Douglas Despres / California Attorney General's Office, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (GSM California fixed library, landscape crop with the subject fully in frame).
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- 2026-11-06Follow-Up: Justice Department Drops California Ballot Lawsuit; Bonta Says Federal Government Gave Up After Four Court LossesThis story
