9th Circuit denies feds’ appeal over 20,000 ballots; district court hearing to proceed – Los Angeles Times

9th Circuit denies feds’ appeal over 20,000 ballots; district court hearing to proceed  Los Angeles Times

A federal appeals court Monday denied an emergency request from the U.S. Justice Department to step in and block California election officials from counting about 20,000 ballots from voters whose citizenship the Trump administration has questioned. The three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals — composed of two judges appointed by President Trump and one by President Biden — ruled that it did not have jurisdiction over the request, given that a lower district court has not yet made a ruling on it. But two of the three judges also wrote separately to make clear they would have denied the Trump administration's request on other grounds too.

In an unsigned order — joined by Judge Mark J. Bennett, one of the Trump appointees, and Judge Gabriel P. Sanchez, the Biden appointee — the court granted a request from Los Angeles County to dismiss the appeal, writing that the Trump administration "failed to allow the district court adequate opportunity to consider" its request for a temporary restraining order barring the ballots from being counted before filing its unusual appeal. The court found that the "emergency" the Trump administration asserted was in part a "self-constructed one" and that delays in the district court were partly attributable to its "own delay in filing suit, in realizing that existing California state