A US appeals court turned away the Trump administration’s request to force California to segregate mail-in ballots from a list of 20,000 people suspected by federal officials as likely non-citizens who registered to vote, saying a lower-court judge should hear the dispute first.

By a 2-1 vote, a panel in San Francisco on Monday rejected the government’s argument that the appeals court should take up the matter because the district judge in Los Angeles who is overseeing the case hadn’t issued a ruling quickly enough with the midterm election days away.

“The United States failed to allow the district court adequate opportunity to consider its application for a temporary restraining order,” according to the majority opinion. “For that reason, we lack jurisdiction over this appeal.”The Department of Justice didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The appeals-court ruling, following a rare Sunday hearing, is the latest twist in a growing clash between California election officials and the Trump administration, which has been laser-focused on voter fraud claims across the country that Democratic-led states say are unfounded.

The ruling could be appealed further or return to the lower court, where US District Judge David O. Carter has set a potential hearing for Tuesday. An eventual ruling by Carter could set off yet another round of appeals, in which case the Supreme Court may have the final say.

The office of California Attorney General Rob Bonta didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

The dismissal of the DOJ’s appeal was approved by two judges, Mark Bennett, a Trump appointee, and Gabriel P. Sanchez, an appointee of former President Joe Biden. Another Trump appointee, Patrick Bumatay, wrote in a dissenting opinion that California “frustrated” federal law by “comingling” ballots of citizens and suspected non-citizens.

“The federal government came to us for help as it sought to enforce Congress’s law against illegal voting by aliens,” Bumatay wrote. “It did so because California would not help. Instead, California interpreted state and federal law to stop it from doing so, while empowering it to mix legal and likely illegal ballots together.”The US wanted to have the disputed ballots temporarily set aside until the voters’ citizenship status can be verified, but California argues that would effectively disenfranchise legal voters because the election would be over by the time their status was confirmed.

The Justice Department sued California on Oct. 15 for allegedly failing to join the federal government’s effort to verify the citizenship status of the people on the list. The Trump administration has placed similar pressure on other states but California was the first to be sued.

The administration asked Carter a few days later to temporarily block California from counting the ballots, who set a hearing on the matter for Oct. 27. But the Justice Department took the issue up to the appeals court, arguing that judge wasn’t moving fast enough.

The federal government attempted to expedite the case because California officials have already counted more than 300,000 ballots in a process that makes it impossible to know who cast the ballot once it has been separated from the envelope, though the envelopes remain on file.

Democratic officials have argued the lists created by the federal government are part of a broader effort by President Donald Trump to sow doubt about the outcome of the elections in which Republicans are widely expected to lose control of the House and possibly the Senate.

“Anybody reporting Voter Fraud in the past Elections, or the upcoming 2026 Midterm Election, will be paid $1,000,000 upon the arrest and conviction of those that created the Fraud!”Trump In another high-profile example, Nevada officials said a similar list sent to the state by the administration turned out to have zero non-citizens. The US didn’t sue Nevada.

California says state election law is already effective in verifying citizenship status and preventing fraudulent votes. Los Angeles County said in a filing in the appellate case that it had sampled the 20,000 suspected non-citizens and found that one in four were born in the US, and that US officials provided “no information on how the list was compiled.”Shortly after the suit was filed, federal agents across California arrested 11 non-citizens who were charged with crimes including fraudulently registering to vote in US elections, part of a dragnet that the government said bolsters its lawsuit against the most populous state. More than a dozen others were charged.

The administration’s effort to force California and other states to segregate the ballots of suspected non-citizens triggered a backlash from national Democrats, who sued the president in Washington federal court to try to block the plan. Groups including the Democratic Senate and House campaign committees claim in the suit that the federal lists are based on “shoddy” data and that Trump is interfering in the elections.

“For over a decade now, President Donald J. Trump has bombarded the American people with lies and misinformation about American elections and voter fraud,” the Democrats, which also include party leaders Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, said in the complaint.

According to the DOJ’s complaint against California, a federal agent offered state officials an encrypted thumb drive containing the list of suspected non-citizens who were registered to vote in the state. The officials “rejected” the offer, the DOJ said in its lawsuit, demonstrating “a total lack of commitment to work with the federal government to protect the integrity of our elections.”While the Constitution largely puts states in charge of elections, Trump has sought to reach into virtually every corner of the voting process as he boosts baseless accusations of widespread voter fraud for his loss in the 2020 election. Trump has pushed to curb mail-in voting, which has been used by tens of millions of Americans including the president.

The case is USA v State of California, 26-7070, 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals.