LOS ANGELES (KEYT) – Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles filed a lawsuit Thursday alleging that California is in violation of the U.S. Constitution by providing ballots to registered voters the federal government believes are not eligible to vote.
Article VI, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution states that laws of the United States, "shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby" and is known as the Supremacy Clause.
According to the First Assistant's Office for the Central District of California, the Department of Homeland Security and other federal partners determined that more than 20,000 registered voters in California are ineligible to vote in this election cycle.
"It is unlawful for noncitizens to vote in federal elections," stated Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin. "The Department of Homeland Security and our federal partners reviewed publicly available California voter-registration files and compared relevant records with federal immigration data to identify alien registrants. This preliminary analysis has identified a significant number of individuals in California who are likely noncitizens and appear to be registered to vote; the analysis and review remain ongoing. This is completely unacceptable — as even one noncitizen vote cancels out the ballot of an American citizen and undermines our elections. DHS is committed to identifying unlawful voting, protecting the integrity of federal elections, and ensuring that only eligible American citizens elect America's leaders."
Thursday's lawsuit did not cite any ineligible voters who already cast a ballot, noted that both state and federal law still prohibit non-citizens from voting in federal elections, and shared their office is not precluded from prosecuting those who vote illegally if a violation is found, but argued that issuing ballots to potentially ineligible voters could be considered a form of facilitating a violation of the law.
"If California passed a law that allowed noncitizens to vote for a candidate who is running for a seat in the U.S. Senate or the U.S. House of Representatives, that state law would conflict with federal law," explained Thursday's lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. "Because California cannot pass a statute allowing noncitizens to vote in a federal election, it also cannot induce, encourage, promote, or knowingly facilitate noncitizen voting for a candidate who is running for a seat in the U.S. Senate or the U.S. House of Representatives."
According to the California Secretary of State's website, only U.S. citizens over the age of 18 on Election day, not currently serving a state or federal prison term for a felony conviction, and not found mentally incompetent to vote are eligible to register to vote in the state.
Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles argued in their filing that warnings issued by the Trump Administration to the California Secretary of State about potential ineligible voters receiving a ballot earlier this week could violate the U.S. Constitution's Supremacy Clause and asked that courts preemptively prevent the counting of the over 20,000 identified voter's ballots.
"The law is clear, aliens in the United States cannot vote in federal elections," said Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter. "What our complaint alleges is that California is facilitating unlawful voting by knowingly allowing noncitizens to vote."
Notably, federal law requires states to maintain accurate voter rolls and Article I, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution states that decisions regarding, "the times, places, and manner of holding Elections" are delegated to Congress and managed by each state.
The Section does not mention any executive branch position, office, or department.
"We've seen this coming: Donald Trump's Department of Justice with no authority is now actively trying to interfere in the 2026 elections and strong-arm California into purging names from our voter rolls and blocking mail ballots based purely on vague allegations less than three weeks before Election Day," argued Senator Alex Padilla. "This lawsuit has no legal basis or evidence behind it and is nothing more than a blatant abuse of power designed to sow distrust in our elections and threaten Americans' right to vote. The truth is simple: our elections are safe and secure; the widespread voter fraud that Trump has claimed for 10 years does not exist."
In May of last year, the U.S. Department of Justice demanded that 48 states and Washington D.C. provide unredacted copies of voter registration lists and eventually filed suit against 30 states that did not provide the legally-protected information about voters in their respective states.
In January of this year, a federal judge in California dismissed the Trump Administration's demand for voter information finding the Justice Department's request was, "unprecedented and illegal".
"[T]he right to vote was won through generations of sacrifices from marginalized communities the American political system devalued, but who were determined to make the promise of democracy real," shared Judge Carter in his January dismissal. "The pieces of legislation at issue in this litigation were not passed as an unrestricted means for the Executive to collect highly sensitive information about the American people. It is not for the Executive, or even this Court to authorize the use of civil rights legislation as a tool to forsake the privacy rights of millions of Americans. That power belongs solely to Congress."
Thursday's lawsuit did admit that only Congress has the authority to pass legislation changing federal elections as well as the authority to regulate the conduct of non-citizens within the nation's borders, but did not cite a statute passed by Congress to authorize Thursday's preemptive lawsuit and instead argued that state laws that pose a potential obstacle to Congressional intent as understood by federal prosecutors are subject to judicial review.
"Under the Supremacy Clause, courts may find preemption where 'state law stands as an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of the full purposes and objectives of Congress'," argued federal prosecutors. "There is no 'rigid formula or rule' for determining when a state law creates such an obstacle that it is preempted by federal law."
It was not made clear in Thursday's lawsuit how federal prosecutors would be prevented under current law from prosecuting those who vote unlawfully as they did just last month, but the same office previously opened investigations into the voting process in California and under the direction of the President of the United States this summer.
California wasn't alone in the unprecedented demands made by the Justice Department for voter information.
Federal courts in Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Washington D.C. have all rejected the demands from the Trump Administration for legally-protected voter information.
Indeed, no federal courts have required any state in the nation to turn over their voter information in this manner.
The Trump Administration has also issued multiple executive orders and mail processing rule changes to assert its unilateral authority to manage elections nationwide which have also largely been blocked in federal courts.
Notably, in August of this year, over a quarter of the U.S. Senate reminded the Trump Administration that the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 prohibits major changes to voter rolls within 90 days of an election.
The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 created a 90-day window where changes to voter rolls are prohibited to protect the right of voters to challenge their removal stating in 52 U.S.C. § 20507(c)(2), "A State shall complete, not later than 90 days prior to the date of a primary or general election for Federal office, any program the purpose of which is to systematically remove the names of ineligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters."
August's letter also noted that even claims of only removing non-citizen voters within the 90-day window have already been rejected by federal courts in two separate cases, See Mi Familia Vota v. Peterson last year and League of United Latin American Citizens of Arizona v. Reagan in 2018.
"[T]he United States actively investigates and prosecutes incidents of unlawful voting," shared federal prosecutors in this week's suit. "But it is not practicable or feasible for the United States to investigate before the 2026 election concludes thousands, let alone tens of thousands, of individuals that two federal investigative offices identified on the California voter roster as likely being sent vote-by-mail ballots. California is thus knowingly imposing an obstacle on the United States’ ability to enforce 18 U.S.C. § 611 by facilitating unlawful voting rather than working with the Federal Government to prevent it."
Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security asserted that the state of Nevada could have up to 15,903 non-citizens registered to vote and asked that those registered voters be removed before the upcoming election cycle.
After requests for more information as well as the methodology used to identify the potentially unlawful voters by election officials in Nevada, the Department of Homeland Security provided a spreadsheet of 185 registered voters they stated had been reviewed and flagged as unlawful voters in August.
"As for the 185 individuals, our records indicate that they were citizens," noted Nevada's deputy Attorney General Greg Ott in September of this year in response to the Department of Homeland Security. "You have provided nothing of substance to suggest otherwise."
"California election officials were given an opportunity to remove noncitizens from their voter rolls and to sequester ballots returned from suspected ineligible voters. They refused," argued First Assistant Bill Essayli. "We are taking California to federal court to demand that the votes of American citizens not be diluted by noncitizens."
Your News Channel reached out to the First Assistant's Office for the Central District of California about the exact methods referenced but not identified in Thursday's suit to determine the eligibility of voters as well as the exact number of voters who could be denied their vote and the office referred our questions back to the suit.
Tools previously used to determine voter eligibility by the Trump Administration have already been reviewed and rejected in federal courts.
In October of last year, a class action lawsuit, League of Women Voters v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, was filed in federal court in Washington D.C. and sought to halt the use of an existing federal database to double check state's voter registration lists.
The database, known as the Systemic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system, is a decades-old tool for state and federal agencies to verify citizenship status for people looking to access government programs or licenses.
On June 22, 2026, a federal court blocked the continued use of the system to purge voters.
"On June 22, 2026, following several months of litigation in League of Women Voters v. Department of Homeland Security, a D.C. federal district court set aside and vacated the 2025 modified SAVE program, finding it was 'contrary to law, arbitrary and capricious, in excess of statutory authority, and without observance of procedure required by law'," noted August's letter from members of the U.S. Senate. "The court ordered DHS to undo the newly established bulk upload feature and dismantle its connection to sensitive Social Security Administration data."
In response to Thursday's filing, Ranking Members of the Senate's Judiciary Committee, Committee on Rules and Administration, Select Committee on Intelligence, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee wrote to Attorney General Blanche and FBI Director Kash about the lawsuit.
"Under your leadership, DOJ [U.S. Department of Justice] and the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] have sought to upend our federalist system by seizing ballots and election materials, seeking the personal information of election workers and volunteers, showing up at the homes of election officials for questioning, threatening election officials with prosecution, attempting to compel states to provide the federal government with unredacted voter rolls, and raiding the offices of a voting rights nonprofit—often at the apparent behest of President Trump and White House officials," stated the letter from members of the Senate. "This weaponization became clear last year, when the head of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division (CRT) rewrote its mission statement and began filing lawsuits against multiple states to demand they produce unredacted copies of their voter registration lists. So far, CRT has filed theselawsuits against 30 states and the District of Columbia—and, to date, not a single court has ruled in favor of the federal government, as judges appointed by Democrats and Republicans alike have lambasted the effort as legally and factually baseless."
"The concern over this Administration engaging in intimidation tactics related to the election is not unwarranted. Just one month before election day, President Trump continues to float the idea that he has legal authority to declare a national emergency or invoke the Insurrection Act around the midterms," noted the Senators Thursday. "This week, DOJ attempted to escalate these efforts, laying the groundwork to potentially challenge ballots ahead of Election Day. In a letter to the California Secretary of State and Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk (RR/CC), the acting Deputy Attorney General demanded that California officials verify the citizenship of individuals named on a DOJ-provided thumb drive that the Trump Administration 'believes are likely noncitizens.' The letter threatened legal action if California officials do not review the list within 48 hours and follow the Department's instructions on how to handle the ballots of these individuals, when state and local election officials should be focusing their time and resources on running a safe and secure election—and despite the Administration's demonstrated track record of wrongly identifying eligible voters as non-citizens."
While federal law already makes unlawful voting illegal, multiple federal laws explicitly prohibit election interference by individuals acting, "under the color of law":
18 U.S.C. § 242: Prohibits willfully acting under government authority to deprive individuals of their rights, including the right to vote 18 U.S.C. § 592: Prohibits stationing "troops or armed men" by military or federal officials at the polls in a general or special election 18 U.S.C. § 595: Prohibits government employees from using official authority in connection with federally financed activity to interfere with or affect a federal election 18 U.S.C. § 598: Prohibits the use of congressional appropriations "for the purpose of interfering with, restraining, or coercing" any person in the exercise of the right to vote 52 U.S.C. § 10307(a): Prohibits persons acting under color of law from failing or refusing "to permit any person to vote who is entitled to vote" or "to tabulate, count, and report such person's vote.""The Constitution grants the President no role in the administration of elections," added the Senate members Thursday. "Patriotic Americans across the country are working tirelessly to combat the chaos and distrust that you have sown and ensure that every eligible American is able to cast their ballot and that their vote is counted. Thanks to the work of many state Attorneys General, state and local election officials, and community organizations and volunteers across the country, Americans should have confidence that their voices will be heard in November— and these efforts by the Trump Administration to weaponize federal law enforcement to meddle in the midterm elections will ultimately fail."
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