A federal appeals court has rejected the Trump administration's late-breaking effort to force California to separate mail-in ballots from 20,000 purported noncitizens.

A 2-1 ruling from a panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that the Justice Department improperly circumvented a lower-court judge who had scheduled a hearing on the matter on Tuesday and moved too slowly to seek emergency relief.

"[T]he United States failed to allow the district court adequate opportunity to consider its application for a Temporary Restraining Order," the majority wrote. "The United States's claimed emergency, at least in part, is a self-constructed one."

...