The E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse in Washington, home of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, where Chief Judge James E. Boasberg ordered the Justice Department to share its noncitizen voter list. Carol M. Highsmith photo for the U.S. General Services Administration (public domain).
The Justice Department has asked a federal judge to weigh a criminal contempt referral against the immigrant rights group that analyzed its noncitizen voter list of more than 20,000 Californians. In a Sunday filing, the department told Chief Judge James E. Boasberg that the group’s published findings went beyond the narrow use his order allowed and suggested he refer the matter to the department “for investigation for possible criminal contempt of court,” the Associated Press reported. The group, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), and its lawyers at UCLA’s Voting Rights Project say they followed the court’s orders.
The filing lands two days before California votes and a day after the plaintiffs’ analysis, reported here Oct. 31, said 8,880 of the 20,930 names, about 42 percent, do not appear in the state’s voter file, that at least 22 people on the list are likely naturalized citizens, and that thousands more citizens appear to have been swept in.
What “standing only” was supposed to mean
The dispute turns on the terms under which CHIRLA saw the list. On Oct. 30, Boasberg ordered the department to hand it over, and according to the AP he barred the plaintiffs from disclosing any names and limited them to using the data to argue standing, the threshold question of whether CHIRLA and its members are actually harmed by the list. The department, which fought disclosure, had asked at minimum for a protective order barring the plaintiffs from “disclosing or disseminating the list or its contents to anyone” and from “using the list for any purpose other than standing analysis for this case only.”
The department’s Sunday filing argues the analysis broke that line. “The report’s political grandstanding about alleged inaccuracies that purportedly impact California voters generally, or comparisons between the government’s list and the full ‘California voter file,’ has no relevance to whether the particular plaintiffs in this case have standing,” it said, according to the AP. “Plaintiffs’ counsel and their experts fully complied with the Court’s orders,” Alberto Lammers, a spokesman for the UCLA project, said in a statement.
Both readings have support. An organization suing for its members must show specific members are hurt, which favors the department’s view that statewide match rates are beside the point. But evidence that the government’s matching method sweeps in naturalized citizens is also evidence that CHIRLA’s naturalized members could be on the list, which is the core of its injury claim. The open question is whether aggregate statistics count as the list’s “contents.” The AP’s account describes percentages and counts, not names, and the filing’s sample of names was lodged for the judge’s private review.
How a contempt referral works, and why this one is unusual
Federal courts can punish disobedience of their orders as criminal contempt under 18 U.S.C. 401. Under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 42, a judge who wants a criminal contempt pursued must ask a government attorney to prosecute it, and if the government declines, the court appoints another attorney. That is what makes this request unusual: the opposing party is asking the judge to send its adversary’s conduct to that same party for investigation.
The administration says the names came from California’s registration data checked against federal citizenship records. California officials counter that the list is riddled with errors and arrived too late for the checks state law requires before anyone is removed from the rolls, the AP reported.
For immigrants, the group with the most at stake is naturalized citizens, who make up 21 percent of California’s eligible voters, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of 2022 American Community Survey data. Their federal records show years in noncitizen status, where a name match can go wrong. If the price of testing a government citizenship list in court is the risk of a contempt referral, fewer outside groups may run those tests, and the department’s lists would face less scrutiny before they are used.
The second front in San Francisco
The department also appealed on Sunday a Friday-night ruling by U.S. District Judge Trina L. Thompson in San Francisco that bars it from demanding that election offices remove possible noncitizens, separate their ballots or threaten legal action, saying she ruled before it could respond, the AP reported. Thompson set a Monday hearing. Washington state has raised similar objections to its own federal list, and Boasberg is also hearing the challenge to the department’s warnings to states.
Whatever Boasberg does with the request, its effect is likely to outlast Nov. 3. Finding the analysis proper would keep the error findings in the record as the case turns to what the government does with the names next. Finding otherwise would narrow what any plaintiff can say about a government list it sees under court order.
This article is for general information and is not legal advice.
Sources
- Associated Press, “DOJ urges sanctions for database analysis critical of its noncitizen voting claims” (Nov. 1, 2026)
- Defendants’ Motion for Stay Pending Mandamus, Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights v. DHS, No. 1:26-cv-03072 (D.D.C., Oct. 30, 2026)
- Plaintiffs’ filing with voter list analysis, No. 1:26-cv-03072 (D.D.C., Oct. 31, 2026)
- 18 U.S.C. 401, Power of court and Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 42, Criminal Contempt
- Pew Research Center, “1 in 10 eligible voters in the U.S. are naturalized citizens” (2022 American Community Survey data)
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