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A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Thursday heard oral argument on the Department of Homeland Security’s request for a stay of a district court order enjoining the department and its agents and officers from conducting certain “elections-related field operations and field interviews in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Wisconsin.” (Oral Argument.) (Stay Motion.) (Order Granting Prelim. Inj.) Politico reported that the panel appeared “unlikely” to allow the department to resume the enjoined operations. (Politico.) For background, see a previous Roundup.
Judge James E. Boasberg (D.D.C.) on Thursday issued a minute order directing the Trump administration to answer by noon on Friday an interrogatory from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which asks the administration to “[i]dentify all States where Defendants have sent state or local election official communications demanding or requesting that they (i) remove specific registered voters from their statewide voter registration lists; (ii) refuse to issue ballots to specific registered voters; or (iii) segregate, or otherwise not count and tabulate, any ballots returned by specific registered voters for the upcoming November 3, 2026 General Election.” (Minute Order.) (Interrogatories.) (NYT.) (Politico.) For background, see a previous Roundup.
Judge Leonard T. Strand (N.D. Iowa) on Monday ordered the government to release Ernesto Rodriguez Martinez from immigration detention after an immigration judge failed to provide Rodriguez Martinez adequate process at the bond hearing Judge Strand previously had ordered. “The IJ’s so-called ‘hearings’ were a flagrant deprivation of Rodriguez Martinez’s due process rights,” Judge Strand wrote, “and have caused me to lose trust that any administrative, post-deprivation process will meaningfully safeguard his liberty interest.” (Order.)
The Justice Department on Thursday filed a motion with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit for an injunction pending appeal that would require California “(1) to segregate vote-by-mail ballots from persons identified by the Federal Government likely to be noncitizens and (2) to independently—or in collaboration with the Federal Government—verify their citizenship status before tabulating their vote-by-mail ballot.” (Motion.) The Justice Department also reportedly has issued grand jury subpoenas to local election officials as part of its criminal investigation into the alleged presence of noncitizens on California’s voter rolls. (NYT.)
The department also reportedly has issued grand jury subpoenas in its investigation of efforts in Alaska to recruit a U.S. Senate candidate with the same name as the state’s incumbent Senator Dan Sullivan to challenge him and confuse voters. (WSJ.) (AP.) The department filed an amended complaint on Thursday in its lawsuit to “protect the integrity of the 2026 Senate election in Alaska.” (Amended Complaint.)
Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs on Wednesday rebuffed the Justice Department’s request not to count ballots from a list of persons, compiled by the department, who allegedly “are or were noncitizens” and “who are registered to vote.” Hobbs wrote that “[w]ithout individualized proof of ineligibility, it would be both irresponsible and illegal for election officials to decline to process a registered voter’s ballot.” (Letter.)
Payvand Ahdout argues that when “courts decline to hear interbranch cases on justiciability grounds, those determinations are not neutral. Instead, they have upstream consequences for the way powers are exercised between the branches.” (SSRN.)
Pending Interim Order Applications Involving the U.S. Government in the Supreme Court
Mullin v. Friends of the Ruidosa Church: The government on October 21 asked the Supreme Court to issue a stay pending appeal of a district court preliminary injunction halting government construction of barriers along a portion of the U.S.-Mexico border. The government asked the Court to construe its application as a petition for a writ of certiorari and grant the petition. (Application.) The respondents filed their opposition on October 29.