By Andrew Chung
WASHINGTON, Nov 3 (Reuters) - Six hours and 24 minutes. That is how long it took the US Supreme Court's justices to shut down President Donald Trump's attempt to intervene in California's ballot count on the eve of Tuesday's midterm elections.
Usually an institution that takes its time with decisions — mostly over months but even in emergency actions, over weeks — the justices acted on Monday with remarkable speed. They gave the administration's case the same kind of unceremonious treatment
sometimes exhibited in matters they apparently deem unworthy of the top US judicial body's attention.
The court's decision to deny the administration's request to temporarily block California from counting mail-in ballots from more than 20,000 registered voters who federal officials allege are likely non-US citizens came in a brief, one-sentence order. The court offered no explanation for its decision, and there were no publicly noted dissents among the justices.
It showed how the winning ways for Trump and his fellow Republicans came to a sudden halt in election-related decisions at the Supreme Court in recent weeks. For instance, the court in September also refused to let the administration enforce a US Postal Service rule to restrict voting by mail, a mode of casting ballots used more commonly by Democratic voters than Republican voters.
Prior to these recent decisions, the court had made a series of rulings in election-related cases in which Republicans generally fared better than Democrats on matters such as the drawing of electoral districts and minority voting rights, wins that shaped the midterm battlefield to an unusual degree.
The court's 6-3 conservative majority includes three justices appointed by Trump, though he voiced regret about nominating all three of them after the Postal Service ballots ruling.
THE STAKES IN THE MIDTERMS
The Republicans in Tuesday's midterms are fighting to retain control of Congress, where they hold slim majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate. Democrats need a net gain of at least four seats each in the House of Representatives and Senate to secure majorities in those chambers. Ceding control of either chamber to the Democrats would imperil Trump's legislative agenda and open the door to Democratic-led congressional investigations targeting him and his administration.
Legal experts said the setbacks for the administration and Republicans at the court in recent weeks may reflect the poor quality of the arguments they presented.
While the court already may have been hesitant to intervene so close to an election, Loyola Law School professor Justin Levitt, an expert in constitutional and election law, said, "I think, frankly, the broader string of losses by Republicans, by the DOJ (Department of Justice), is because their cases haven't been very good."
"The DOJ's case in California is the most striking example yet," Levitt said, calling it "hot garbage."
Ohio State University election law expert Edward Foley noted that in the California case the court did not even solicit a response from the state to the administration's request, a step that when taken may indicate that the justices are taking a matter seriously.
"But when a case is exceptionally weak, as DOJ's was regarding the California ballots, it's inevitable that a message is sent. Not even bothering to get a response shows how weak the filing was," Foley said.
A Justice Department spokesperson on Tuesday expressed disappointment in the court's ruling in the California case.
"But this is not the end of our efforts. We are deploying election monitors in California and across the country to observe compliance with federal law, charging election fraudsters daily, and will pursue other legal avenues to ensure that only eligible American citizens vote," the spokesperson said.
Among the other setbacks for Trump's party in recent weeks were three decisions by the court in September that barred Missouri from using a redrawn map of US House districts designed to favor Republicans. Missouri's top court had ruled that the Republican-drawn map could not be used in the midterms unless it was first put to a voter referendum.
Reinstating this map "in the midst of an ongoing election would usher in electoral chaos," the Supreme Court said in its unsigned ruling in the third Missouri decision, which, like the California ruling, also showed no public dissents.
In the decision on the Postal Service rule concerning mail-in ballots, only the court's two most conservative justices — Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas — publicly dissented.
WINNING WAYS
Trump and his party had generally done well in election-related cases during this election cycle.
In a landmark ruling powered by the conservative justices, the court in April gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, making it harder for minorities to challenge electoral maps as racially discriminatory. Several Republican-led Southern states then rushed to dismantle House districts with sizable Black populations in time for the midterms. Black voters tend to support Democratic candidates.
In June, the court threw out longstanding campaign finance limits in a challenge brought by Trump's vice president, JD Vance, and others. Since then, Republican committees have greatly exceeded these former limits, with their Democratic counterparts doing so to a lesser extent.
The court further bolstered coordinated spending by allowing a Trump administration policy giving political parties, and not just candidates, access to discounted TV and radio advertising rates.
'FLY-BY-NIGHT LITIGATION'
Notre Dame Law School professor Derek Muller said that the Voting Rights Act and campaign finance cases involved long-contested legal issues and significant constitutional theories, while the recent cases were filed close to an election and were "half-baked or under-theorized."
"To me, then, there's a big difference between the kinds of signature litigation that conservative causes have been developing for decades — which are likely to win before the court — and the fly-by-night litigation that seems to be a regular loser before the court," Muller added.
Other Supreme Court rulings during this election cycle allowed starkly partisan voting maps for the midterms, fueling an unprecedented redistricting arms race between Republicans and Democrats. This battle was initiated last year when Trump urged Republican-led states to rip up existing congressional maps and draw new ones more likely to help the party pick up House seats in the midterms.
Texas was the first to do so, and the Supreme Court in December 2025 allowed the new map. California responded to the move by Texas by redrawing its congressional map to favor Democrats, and the court in February allowed that, too.
NONCITIZEN VOTING CLAIMS
Trump's administration intensified its focus on alleged noncitizen voting in the run-up to the midterms. It sued California to try to prevent the counting of ballots from a list compiled by Trump's Department of Homeland Security of 20,000 registered voters who it alleged were likely non-US citizens.
Lower courts expressed concern over the reliability of the list, which California said was rife with errors.
Multiple studies and state audits show that ineligible voting, including by noncitizens, is rare. Trump has made false claims about widespread US voting fraud including in the 2020 election lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
In another case, a federal judge on Sunday dismissed the administration's lawsuit seeking to intervene in the US Senate race in Alaska.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, said he viewed the Supreme Court's action on Monday as sending a clear message to the Trump administration.
"I think the court is saying, 'We've had enough. You need to back off and bring to us cases that are worthy of us, worthy of the highest court in the land, and stop bringing the trash forward because it'll get dismissed just like this one,'" Bonta told Reuters.
Bonta added that he thinks the court is sending a message that the justices are not willing to tolerate baseless claims about election fraud.
"I think the courts, including the Supreme Court, have mostly held the line on federal government interference and subversion attempts," said Rick Hasen, an election law expert at UCLA.
"That's a different pattern than in the usual election law cases like voting rights and campaign finance," Hasen said.
(Reporting by Andrew Chung; Additional reporting by Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff; Editing by Will Dunham)
