Four days before Election Day, a federal judge has slammed the brakes on the Trump administration’s campaign to lean on the people who run America’s elections.
US District Judge Trina Thompson granted a temporary restraining order Friday evening that, while it is in place, bars the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security from demanding that election officials in any state segregate ballots, purge voters from the rolls, or halt ballot processing.
No more threats of prosecution
The order also blocks the two agencies from threatening election officials with criminal prosecution, and from taking other actions that “threaten, intimidate or coerce” officials into changing how ballots are processed based on claims that certain voters are ineligible.
“Although Defendants claim that their actions are designed to halt unlawful voting by noncitizens, their actions are likely to have the effect of interfering with election administration and disenfranchising lawful voters,” Thompson wrote in her opinion, as reported by CNN.
Her ruling directly rebuked the administration’s months-long claim that it can and will prosecute election officials for not doing enough to stop illegal voting. When state and local workers distribute, process, or count ballots in accordance with the law, Thompson wrote, “they do not violate federal criminal law even if a particular ballot belongs to a registered voter alleged by Defendants to be ineligible to vote.”
The administration has to report back
The judge is also requiring the administration to tell her about any search warrant applications, grand jury subpoenas, or other demands to access election materials or ballots tied to the lists it has created alleging that people are ineligible to vote. The order is set to expire November 16.
Who brought the case
The lawsuit was filed in the Northern District of California by a coalition of labor unions and civil rights groups, including the NAACP and the League of United Latin American Citizens. They argue the administration’s recent conduct violates the Voting Rights Act and is an unconstitutional intrusion into the states’ control of their own elections.
At the center of the fight is a DHS data-matching program that compared state voter lists against federal records. Election officials say the resulting lists of suspected noncitizens are unreliable and include US citizens.
A rough day in court for the administration
Thompson’s order capped a string of setbacks Friday. Earlier in the day, a federal appeals court panel rejected, 2-1, the Justice Department’s request to force California to set aside ballots from more than 20,000 people the administration alleges may not be citizens, the second time in a week the panel turned the government down. The Justice Department has also sent letters to 29 states and Washington, DC, threatening investigations and demanding that they preserve voter data from the 2024 election.
CNN reported that it reached out to the Justice Department for comment. Election Day is Tuesday, November 3.