# Federal Judge Bars DOJ and DHS From Sending States Lists of Suspected Noncitizen Voters, Hours Before Polls Opened; Appeals Panel Sides With the Government on Prosecution Threats

Judge Tanya Chutkan's Monday order stops the Justice Department and Homeland Security from sending states lists of voters they say may not be citizens. The same day, a 9th Circuit panel cleared the government to threaten officials with prosecution. Reuters and the AP report the details.

- Section: [Politics](https://rightnewsrightnow.com/politics/)
- Published: 2026-11-03
- By: RightNewsRightNow Staff
- Canonical page: https://rightnewsrightnow.com/articles/judge-chutkan-blocks-noncitizen-voter-lists-states-election-eve-reuters/

On the last day before polls opened, a federal judge in Washington limited how far the Trump administration can go in policing noncitizen voting, Reuters reports. A separate appeals panel gave the government a win the same day.

The order. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan barred the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security from sending states lists of registered voters the administration says may not be citizens. She also barred them from asking state election officials to separate those voters' ballots, or not count them, until citizenship is proven. The Associated Press, in its Election Day live coverage, says she issued the ruling late Monday and that it covers lists already sent to California and Washington.

Her reasoning. Reuters says Chutkan found the administration's data may not be reliable, so lawfully registered voters could be shut out. The AP says she wrote that more transmissions of voter data would likely confuse voters and election officials at a time when resources should go to running the election. The challengers, voting rights and privacy groups, argued the lists violated the Privacy Act of 1974.

The government's position. The Justice Department said in a Saturday court filing that its letters to California and Washington were part of enforcing the federal ban on noncitizen voting and were not a distinct policy a federal court could review. Reuters notes that noncitizen voting is illegal and that available evidence shows it is exceedingly rare.

The government's win. Reuters reports that a panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco, ruled Monday that the government may threaten state and local election officials with prosecution if they do not comply with demands tied to alleged noncitizen voting. Reuters also reports that a federal judge in San Francisco ordered the department on Friday to stop threatening to prosecute such officials. Reuters says Chutkan is not bound by the 9th Circuit ruling.

The California ballots. The AP reports the Supreme Court on Monday refused to force California to set aside ballots from about 20,000 people the administration flagged as likely noncitizens, with no justice publicly dissenting. Fox News, in our earlier report on the case, described the denial as coming from Justice Elena Kagan. California says the federal list may contain errors that would disenfranchise eligible voters.

What it means today. Counting has not started. Polls were opening across the East Coast Tuesday morning, and the first closings come at 6 p.m. Eastern in parts of Indiana and Kentucky. Whether the Justice Department appeals Chutkan's order was not reported in the sources we read.

What we could not check. We did not see the court orders or the voter lists. Whether the lists are accurate is the disputed point: the government says they identify likely noncitizens, while the judge and the states say the data may be unreliable. We have no figure for how many people are on the lists beyond the 20,000 California number, which the government supplied and California disputes.

Sources: Reuters, "Judge blocks Trump administration from pressuring states over noncitizen voting," via the Miami Herald: https://miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/article317895062.html. The Associated Press, "Midterm elections live updates: https://apnews.com/live/midterm-election-2026" and "Supreme Court rejects Trump administration push to set aside thousands of California ballots": https://apnews.com/article/midterm-elections-immigration-voter-fraud-trump-48998968a23a4af2f59eaea3dba4d2f3

## Source

Original reporting: [Reuters](https://miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/article317895062.html)