Update, Nov. 3: The legal fight described in Network of Tacoma’s Oct. 22 report on HSI voter-eligibility field operations has expanded into several related court battles. The main result for the nine-state field-operations case is straightforward: the preliminary injunction remained in place through Election Day after the federal government failed to obtain a stay in the Ninth Circuit.

The Supreme Court also rejected an emergency request by the Trump administration on Nov. 2. But that order arose from a separate California ballot case, not from the appeal of the nine-state HSI field-operations injunction. Keeping those cases separate is essential to understanding what each court did—and did not—decide.

The HSI field-operations appeal: the injunction stayed in effect

The Oct. 21 district-court order in California Nurses Association v. Mullin limited election-related DHS and HSI field operations in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin through the close of polls on Nov. 3. It applies when operations involve, or are likely to involve, people the government knows, suspects, or should reasonably suspect are U.S. citizens. It also restricts certain operations based wholly on TECS records generated through the voter-eligibility matching policy.

As our original report explained, the district court found at the preliminary stage that the nursing unions were likely to succeed on their claim that the practices at issue intimidated people who assist or encourage voting, in violation of Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act. That was not a final decision on every claim, and it did not prohibit lawful investigations of actual election crimes.

The federal defendants appealed and sought an emergency stay. On Oct. 30, a Ninth Circuit panel denied the request. The court’s order records that the district court had declined to stay its own injunction and that the panel then denied the government’s request for a stay pending appeal. The practical effect was that the district court’s limits remained operative during the election period.

The government argued that the unions lacked standing, that private parties could not enforce Section 11(b), and that the injunction was vague and too broad. Those arguments remain part of the appeal. A denial of a stay is not the final merits ruling; it is an interim decision about whether the order should be paused while the appeal proceeds.

What the Supreme Court rejected—and what it did not

On Nov. 2, the Supreme Court denied the administration’s application for an injunction pending appeal in United States v. California, No. 26A624. The Court’s one-page order states: “The application for injunction pending appeal … is denied.” The order gives no reasoning, as is common for emergency orders, and records no public dissent.

That emergency application concerned the administration’s effort to require California to set aside ballots from roughly 20,000 voters the government had labeled likely noncitizens while their eligibility was reviewed. It was not an appeal from California Nurses Association v. Mullin, and it did not itself decide the legality of HSI field interviews in Washington or the other eight states.

Still, the cases are connected by the same broader federal push to identify alleged noncitizen voting using federal voter-data matching and related investigations. In the California ballot case, lower courts had rejected the requested ballot-segregation order before the administration sought emergency relief from the Supreme Court. The Associated Press reported that California officials said the federal list contained errors and that the Justice Department acknowledged there could be errors.

A second Nov. 2 ruling limited voter-data transmission

Also on Nov. 2, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan issued preliminary relief in League of Women Voters v. Department of Homeland Security, a separate case in Washington, D.C. That ruling concerns the government’s collection, use and transmission of voter data—not the HSI field-operation injunction.

The court said DHS and DOJ had collected millions of voting records, including records of U.S. citizens, and were transmitting selected records to election officials while asserting that certain people were ineligible to vote. It granted preliminary relief against the challenged voter-data transmission policy. The ruling does not bar officials from responding to individual citizenship-verification inquiries through the SAVE system; it addresses the broader transmission policy challenged in that case.

Alaska: state and federal courts rejected separate intervention efforts

The administration’s California emergency application was also not the Alaska Senate controversy involving Democratic candidate Mary Peltola, Republican incumbent Sen. Dan S. Sullivan and another candidate, Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. That dispute produced two different court outcomes that are sometimes blurred together.

First, the Alaska Supreme Court upheld a ruling allowing Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. to appear on the ballot. In other words, Alaska’s highest court did not remove him from the race. That state-court decision was not a U.S. Supreme Court emergency case.

Second, after the Trump administration asked a federal court to block certification if the incumbent Sullivan lost under specified circumstances, U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason dismissed the Justice Department’s suit on Nov. 1. According to the dismissal reported by Axios, the court found that the government had supplied no workable way to determine whether votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan were intended for the incumbent without violating ballot secrecy. The Justice Department said it planned to appeal.

So the careful summary is this: the U.S. Supreme Court declined emergency intervention in the California ballot case; Alaska’s Supreme Court had already allowed the second Sullivan onto the ballot; and a federal district judge dismissed the separate DOJ effort to delay an Alaska certification. The Supreme Court has not issued the Alaska decision reported here.

Why the distinctions matter in Washington

Washington was one of the nine states named in the HSI field-operations order. As of Election Day, the Ninth Circuit’s refusal to pause that order meant the district court’s temporary restrictions remained in place for the period the judge specified.

The Supreme Court’s California-ballot order did not create a new rule governing Washington ballots or settle the HSI case. It rejected a particular emergency request concerning California’s ballot-counting procedures. The Alaska rulings arose from a separate Senate-race dispute, and the D.C. voter-data decision addressed another part of the administration’s broader effort.

For Pierce County voters, the practical sources of information remain VoteWA and Pierce County Elections. People who believe they have been intimidated or improperly pressured in connection with voting should record what happened if it is safe to do so and promptly contact election officials or a qualified voting-rights organization.

This article will be updated if a court changes the status of the injunction or issues a merits decision in the pending appeals.