Legal Dispute: Justice Department Seeks Contempt Charges Over Voter Data Analysis

The Department of Justice asked a federal judge on Sunday to impose sanctions on a civil rights organization after its attorneys released a data report challenging the accuracy of a government list of alleged noncitizen voters. The filing marks an escalation in a legal battle over election integrity in California, where the administration claims more than 20,000 registered voters are not U.S. citizens.

The conflict stems from a ruling issued on Friday by U.S. District Court Chief Judge James Boasberg in Washington, D.C. He granted the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, known as CHIRLA, access to federal data on the 20,000 individuals. The order restricted the group to using the data solely for arguments regarding its legal standing in the case. Boasberg explicitly instructed the plaintiffs not to disclose specific names from the list.

On Saturday, lawyers for CHIRLA submitted documents to the court stating that their analysis found over 40% of the people on the government's list are absent from the state's voter file. The report also identified 22 individuals who are likely naturalized U.S. citizens. The attorneys noted that thousands of other citizens appear to be included on the roster as well.

The Justice Department argued in its Sunday filing that the report was unrelated to the specific legal question of standing. It described the group's findings as political grandstanding that had no relevance to whether the particular plaintiffs in the case could bring the lawsuit. The department suggested that Judge Boasberg refer the matter to federal prosecutors for an investigation into possible criminal contempt of court.

Alberto Lammers, a spokesman for the University of California, Los Angeles Voting Rights Project, which filed the case and conducted the analysis for CHIRLA, defended the group's actions. In an emailed statement, he said that the plaintiffs' counsel and their experts fully complied with the court's orders.

The legal fight is taking place with little time before the election. In a separate case, Judge Trina L. Thompson in San Francisco issued a ruling on Friday night that barred the Justice Department from forcing election offices to remove suspected noncitizens from rolls or separate their ballots. The administration appealed that decision on Sunday, arguing that Thompson ruled before the government could file its initial arguments. Thompson set a hearing for Monday to consider the appeal.

California election officials have argued that the government list contains numerous errors. They stated they do not have enough time to perform the detailed verification work required by law to remove voters in the days before the election. The administration maintains that its list was compiled carefully from state voter registration data and compared against federal citizenship records. It has issued subpoenas to election offices and warned officials that knowingly allowing ineligible voters to cast ballots could lead to criminal charges.