U.S. Justice Department seeks contempt review over analysis of California 'noncitizen' list

The dispute over the federal list

On Sunday, the U.S. Department of Justice defended a list of more than 20,000 people who, according to the department, are noncitizens registered to vote in California, and accused the immigrant rights organization Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA) of violating a court order by questioning the accuracy of the list. This was reported by Anadolu citing PBS News.

What the court ordered and what the analysis showed

The dispute unfolded after a Friday ruling by Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who granted CHIRLA access to the federal data but barred the disclosure of names and limited the use of the materials to arguments about the group's legal standing in the case. On Saturday, CHIRLA's attorneys told the court that their analysis, conducted by the UCLA Voting Rights Project, showed that more than 40% of the people on the federal list do not appear in California's voter rolls; 22 individuals are likely naturalized U.S. citizens, and thousands more appear to be U.S. citizens as well.

The parties' positions

The Justice Department said the analysis violated Boasberg's order because it was unrelated to the question of the plaintiffs' standing, and asked that the matter be referred for an investigation into possible criminal contempt. According to the department, the report's 'political statements about allegedly inaccurate data' and the comparison of the list with California's full voter file have no bearing on the plaintiffs' standing. Alberto Lammers, a spokesperson for the UCLA Voting Rights Project, rejected the accusations: 'The plaintiffs' attorneys and their experts fully complied with the court's orders.'

Context: parallel cases and data restrictions

In a separate case, the Justice Department appealed a ruling by Judge Trina L. Thompson that barred federal officials from requiring California election offices to remove suspected noncitizens from the voter rolls, segregate their ballots, or threaten them with prosecution; hearings are scheduled for Monday. Earlier, a federal judge in California rejected the administration's demand to segregate ballots, warning that last-minute orders could 'sow chaos' in the state's elections, and two appellate judges upheld that decision. California election officials argue that the federal list contains numerous errors and that there is not enough time to complete the legally required removal process; the administration, for its part, insists the list was compiled by matching the state's voter rolls with federal citizenship data. The Justice Department has also issued subpoenas to several California election offices and warned officials of possible criminal charges for knowingly allowing noncitizens to vote.

Why appearing on the list does not equal a violation

An important clarification for assessing the dispute: in the United States, noncitizens generally may not vote in federal and state elections, including in California; however, San Francisco, under a separate municipal ordinance, allows certain noncitizens — parents and legal guardians of children in the city's public school system — to vote in local school board elections. This means that a noncitizen's mere presence on a voter list does not prove unlawful registration — a circumstance on which CHIRLA's side of the analysis rests.