A sign marks an area for processing vote-by-mail ballots at Miami-Dade County Supervisor of Elections Office, on the day of the US midterm elections, in Doral, Florida, US, November 3, 2026. REUTERS/Eva Marie Uzcategui
A federal appeals court reversed itself on Election Day, handing the Trump administration a green light to pressure the workers counting ballots.
On Tuesday, a majority of an 11-judge en banc panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated a three-judge panel order that halted a temporary restraining order shielding election officials from Justice Department threats of prosecution. The decision wiped out a court order issued late Monday and swung a back-and-forth fight back in the DOJ's favor.
"Pending further order of the court, the three-judge panel order filed on November 2, 2026, and previously vacated, is reinstated," the court's order states.
The restraining order, issued by U.S. District Judge Trina Thompson of the Northern District of California, barred the DOJ from demanding that state and local officials sequester ballots from voters the government suspects are noncitizens and from threatening to prosecute officials who refuse. The suit was brought by the Service Employees International Union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the League of United Latin American Citizens and the NAACP.
Judge Carlos Bea, who wrote the reinstated panel order, reasoned that the DOJ's requests to election officials were "core Executive functions" and that the Voting Rights Act provision the plaintiffs invoked doesn't expressly give private groups the right to sue.
Judge Eric Miller, who joined the majority, acknowledged in a concurrence that many of the government's positions "may have little merit." But he maintained that a district court generally lacks the authority "to enter an injunction prohibiting the Department of Justice from expressing its views about criminal statutes, even if the court determines that those views are incorrect."
Chief Judge Mary Murguia, joined by four colleagues, insisted the ruling clashes with a decision by the court rejecting the DOJ's bid to force California to set aside roughly 20,000 ballots. That decision came last Friday.
"These two decisions cannot be reconciled," Murguia wrote, warning that election officials now "must choose between complying with two conflicting opinions of our court."
Judge Roopali Desai, writing separately, accused the majority of creating "the chaos and confusion" the Supreme Court has repeatedly cautioned against.
Desai added that the reversal leaves election administrators in "an impossible dilemma," since state law requires them to count ballots while the federal government threatens to prosecute them for doing so.
"But it did not have to be this way," she wrote, explaining that the court could have narrowed Thompson's order rather than reinstating the stay.
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