The Justice Department’s aggressive push to police noncitizen voting hit a sharp wall of judicial resistance this week, suffering two separate losses in federal court.
At the center of the legal storm was a sweeping DOJ letter campaign that reached election officials in every one of the 50 states, warning them of potential criminal prosecution for failing to preserve election records.
That campaign came to an abrupt halt Friday when a California federal judge barred the Trump administration from issuing such threats against election workers.
U.S. District Judge Trina Thompson issued the temporary restraining order in response to a lawsuit filed by unions representing California election workers, who argued the threats were unlawful.
Thompson, appointed to the bench during the Biden administration, underscored the urgency of her decision, noting that Election Day was “around the corner.”
The ruling prevents the administration from leveraging the threat of criminal charges as a tool to pressure state and local officials managing the election process.
The restraining order was only one of two significant courtroom setbacks the Justice Department absorbed in California within the same week.
Earlier, a separate federal judge in California dismissed the Trump administration’s lawsuit that had sought to force the state to segregate ballots cast by roughly 20,000 individuals the federal government had flagged as potential noncitizens.
That case had represented one of the administration’s most direct attempts to act on its noncitizen voting concerns before ballots could be counted.
The twin defeats signal growing judicial skepticism toward the administration’s election-related legal strategy, even as officials in Washington press forward with their broader crackdown on alleged noncitizen participation in U.S. elections.
