The Justice Department asked the Supreme Court on Monday to order California to separate mail ballots associated with more than 20,000 people the federal government suspects may not be U.S. citizens, escalating a dispute over voter eligibility one day before the Nov. 3 midterm elections.

The emergency request follows defeats in the district court and a divided federal appeals court. It seeks temporary separation while eligibility is investigated, rather than an immediate final ruling invalidating the ballots. California argues that the underlying list is unreliable and that imposing a new process during voting risks excluding eligible citizens.

AP reported the new appeal Monday, corroborating the application and the lower-court decisions. The request had not itself changed California’s counting rules when the article was prepared. The number of names challenged also does not establish how many ballots were cast, or how many voters are ineligible.

What Washington is asking the justices to do

Solicitor General D. John Sauer’s court application asks for an injunction pending appeal and a shorter administrative injunction while the justices consider that request. The proposed order would keep questioned ballots separate until their lawfulness can be adjudicated.

The government’s central argument is that once ballots are removed from identifying envelopes and mixed with others, officials cannot retrieve the particular votes later. It describes separation as a way to preserve the possibility of meaningful relief, rather than canceling votes immediately. It also contests the lower courts’ conclusions about federal authority and election-law restrictions.

The application acknowledges that the parties dispute whether the people identified are actually noncitizens and registered voters. That qualification matters: an emergency injunction depends on the evidence and legal standard for provisional relief, not simply the existence of a federal allegation.

The dispute behind the list

The original lawsuit, announced Oct. 15, followed a federal review of publicly available voter records and immigration information. The Justice Department said Homeland Security investigators used several verification and data-enrichment methods to identify people it considered likely noncitizens.

Federal officials asked California to examine the names and verify citizenship before counting associated mail ballots. They argued that allowing an unlawful vote would dilute lawful votes and that their intervention enforces the federal prohibition on noncitizen voting. California also prohibits noncitizens from voting; the disagreement concerns the evidence and the procedure for handling suspected violations.

A registration record, an immigration record and a returned ballot answer different questions. The contested list cannot, by itself, establish that every listed person remains registered, received a ballot, returned one or lacks citizenship now. Those distinctions are central to assessing both the scope of the requested order and the harm each side says it would prevent.

Why the lower courts refused emergency relief

In its Oct. 30 appeals order, the Ninth Circuit denied an injunction by a 2–1 vote. The majority concluded that the government had not shown the law and facts clearly justified forcing new ballot-separation and citizenship-verification procedures during an ongoing election.

The judges reasoned that the criminal prohibition on noncitizen voting did not, under these facts, authorize overriding California’s established election procedures. They also raised concerns about federal protections against systematic removals close to an election and about late changes to election rules.

Judge Patrick Bumatay dissented, favoring separation while eligibility was checked. The division reflects competing assessments of which risk is harder to repair: counting a potentially unlawful ballot that later cannot be identified, or withholding a lawful ballot through a disputed screening system.

California challenges accuracy and feasibility

California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s state response to the district-court ruling argues that the federal government has not provided sufficient underlying data and methodology to validate its list. The state says the proposed order could disenfranchise eligible voters and disrupt election administration already underway.

That is an adversarial position from a party to the case, rather than an independent audit. But the appeals majority also cited the district court’s concerns about missing error rates, validation benchmarks and explanations of how records were linked. Those concerns go to whether a suspicion-based list can reliably justify treating thousands of voters differently.

NPR reported that a separate, court-authorized analysis by UCLA Voting Rights Project researchers found 42% of the listed names absent from the current voter roll and identified naturalized citizens. That finding challenges the list’s reach, but does not establish the eligibility of every remaining person. The government continues to defend its review.

The immediate stakes

The justices face a request for intervention while ballots are already being processed. Granting relief would require officials to change how challenged ballots are handled; denying it would leave the existing process in place while litigation proceeds. Neither outcome alone would settle every allegation about an individual voter.

The practical question is therefore narrower than the competing political messages: whether this evidence, at this stage of voting, supports this particular emergency order. Keeping that distinction clear is essential to understanding what the court has been asked to decide and what remains unproven.