DOJ Drops California Suit: 20,000 Flagged Ballots Already Mixed Beyond Checking.

The Justice Department on Friday walked away from its lawsuit over roughly 20,000 California vote-by-mail ballots it had flagged as cast by people highly likely to be noncitizens — not because the list was cleared, but because the courts refused to hold those ballots before Election Day and the ballots are now mixed past checking.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Julie A. Hamill filed THE UNITED STATES’ NOTICE OF VOLUNTARY DISMISSAL in United States v. State of California, et al., Case No. 2:26-cv-12025, before U.S. District Judge David O. Carter in the Central District of California. The three-page notice is Document 180, dated Nov. 6, 2026. It dismisses the case under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(a)(1)(A)(i).

What DOJ said it needed

“The United States sought targeted and modest relief to have California segregate vote-by-mail ballots cast by people highly likely to be noncitizens until state election officials—with the opportunity to work with federal officials—could confirm those voters’ citizenship,” the notice says.

DOJ’s own filing frames the stakes in vote-dilution terms: “each legal vote that is offset by an illegally cast vote constitutes irreparable harm.” It cites First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti and, pointedly, two Ninth Circuit dissents by Judge Patrick Bumatay — United States v. California, 2026 WL 3212945, at *31 (9th Cir. Oct. 26, 2026) (Bumatay, J., dissenting), and 2026 WL 3268272, at *8–*15 (9th Cir. Oct. 30, 2026) (Bumatay, J., dissenting).

The notice also leans on 18 U.S.C. § 611, the federal ban on voting by aliens. Congress’s purpose, DOJ wrote, “was not only to authorize prosecution of illegal voters after their votes have been counted but, more importantly, to also prevent noncitizens from casting ballots in the first place that dilute legal votes.”

Courts said no — until it was too late

Carter denied DOJ’s temporary emergency relief (Dkt. 149) and set a preliminary-injunction hearing for Nov. 13, 2026 (Dkt. 159) — “more than a week after Election Day,” the notice says. That calendar also covered fact-finding on the reliability of the federal list, including a special master. Friday’s dismissal kills that Nov. 13 showdown.

DOJ says it then “exhausted its appeals to obtain timely relief all the way to Supreme Court.” On Nov. 2, the Supreme Court denied the application for injunction pending appeal in United States v. California, et al., No. 26-A624 — a one-sentence order with no noted dissent. unga.news covered that denial here.

The mixing problem DOJ warned about

Here is the line that ends the civil case:

“In light of the Supreme Court’s denial, the United States is evaluating how to best ensure that American votes are protected, including by preventing vote dilution by noncitizens. In addition, by the time of this Court’s hearing on November 13 in this matter, California will have already commingled the challenged ballots with lawful ones. There is then no way to get the challenged ballots segregated. As a result, the relief the United States sought and needed is no longer available—rendering voluntary dismissal necessary because there is no longer Article III jurisdiction.”

That is DOJ saying the segregation remedy is gone — not that the ~20,000 flagged registrations were verified as citizens. Once a California mail ballot is processed, it is anonymized. There is no later pull-out of “the flagged ones.”

CBS News, citing state election officials, reported California had processed roughly 9 million ballots as of early Friday, with nearly 5 million still left to count. The midterm ballots DOJ wanted held are already in that stream.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli had warned before the election that waiting past Election Day would leave nothing to sequester. “We want to stop the illegal voting. We don’t want to chase it later,” he said outside court the week before Nov. 3, according to CBS.

DOJ is not done — California celebrates

Justice Department spokesperson Kiersten Pels told the Los Angeles Times the segregation suit is “moot,” but said the Trump administration “is not backing down” — including in a separate case demanding California “conduct proper list maintenance, including removing noncitizens from the state’s voter rolls — which will be crucial to ensure fair elections in the future.”

California Attorney General Rob Bonta cast Friday as a win. After losses in every court “including the Supreme Court,” he said, “the Trump Administration has given up its latest unlawful effort to interfere with California’s elections and disenfranchise eligible voters.” He added: “Rest assured: California has and always will defend your fundamental right to vote.”

Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan said he was “pleased that the administration has accepted the clarity of the court findings” against it. “Our commitment and focus remain on the fair, secure, accurate, and legal processes we are engaged in to complete and certify the election,” Logan said.

Those quotes dodge the verification hole. Courts blocked the pre-count hold. The Nov. 13 special-master fight over whether the federal list was reliable never happens. The ballots are mixed. Officials still have not publicly walked the public through citizenship checks on the full flagged set before counting.

Bottom line: DOJ asked courts to segregate ~20,000 ballots alleged to belong to likely noncitizens before they disappeared into California’s anonymized count. Carter, the Ninth Circuit majority, and SCOTUS (26-A624) refused. Friday’s FRCP 41 notice is the legal consequence — the remedy is gone because the ballots were mixed, not because anyone proved the list was clean. Voter ID and proof of citizenship exist for this exact reason.