Who’s Really Fighting the DOJ’s California Noncitizen List?
30th October 2026
California Democrats have spent months insisting the state’s elections are free and fair. But progressive groups that spend heavily on Democrat voter outreach walked into a Los Angeles courtroom this month almost as soon as the Department of Justice sued the state over a list of more than 20,000 names it says are likely noncitizens.
The legal fight this month started with the DOJ requesting California to set aside 20,000 ballots it believes are likely tied to noncitizens. Despite 28 federal charges last week, Clinton-appointed Judge David O. Carter denied the DOJ’s expedited request on Wednesday evening, with a handful of outside groups tied to Democrats and progressives having joined the case.
“Our elections are safe and secure. Yet the federal government is continuing its efforts to put up barriers to the ballot box by spreading misinformation and relying on faulty and unreliable data to disenfranchise voters,” Campaign Legal Center’s vice president for voting rights and rule of law Danielle Lang wrote on Oct. 16. “We’re moving to join this case to ensure that all eligible voters can make their voices heard in the 2026 midterm elections.”
Campaign Legal Center (CLC), which describes itself as a “nonpartisan legal organization,” is co-counsel for the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and the NAACP in the case, along with Democracy Defenders Fund (founded by Norman Eisen), the NAACP’s Office of General Counsel, and Altshuler Berzon LLP.
Both LULAC and the NAACP, along with its California/Hawaii State Conference and the Los Angeles Branch, intervened on Oct. 16, a day after Services, Immigrant Rights and Education Network (SIREN) and Mi Familia en Acción filed their own motion. Common Cause filed as an amicus.
The groups that have joined the case have long records of registering and mobilizing immigrant, Latino, and Black voters in California, typically within communities that lean heavily Democrat.
And said ‘communities’ contain large numbers of illegal immigrants and non-citizens that attempt to vote illegally.