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.
In a brief order without explanation, the court turned away an emergency request the Trump administration filed just hours earlier in an unusual last-minute flurry of election litigation. Lower courts had also ruled against the Trump administration.
The court acted so quickly that it did not even ask California for its views first, as it normally does of the opposing party in such cases.
“This latest decision should put an end to the administration’s attempt to disrupt California’s elections through emergency court orders,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, said in a statement.
“But our work is not over. We will remain vigilant and keep fighting back against federal efforts to undermine our democracy,” he added.
The White House and Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests seeking comment.
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 told the Justice Department on Saturday to stop 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 it rarely happens.
That has not stopped the administration from putting pressure on states to check voters’ citizenship, 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 a ballot is valid by checking the voter’s signature against voter registration records, the details identifying the voter 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 there was no evidence Congress intended the federal law that bars noncitizens from voting to pre-empt state election laws.
Travis Crum, an NBC News contributor and election law expert at Washington University in St. Louis, said the Supreme Court’s decisive action rejecting the Trump administration was similar to how it turned away a series of Republican requests seeking to use a new congressional district map over the summer.
In both instances “the court acted quickly to show its displeasure for the underlying claims” as well as reinforcing longstanding precedent against federal courts intervening in elections when they are underway, Crum said.