A majority of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals attributed at least part of the delay in the United States’ claimed emergency involving 20,000 California mail ballots to the federal government. “The United States’s claimed emergency, at least in part, is a self-constructed one,” the majority said. Two members of the three-judge panel agreed, while a third dissented.

The majority identified four aspects of the federal government’s conduct. It said at least part of the delay was attributable to the United States’ delay in filing suit and to the government’s late realization that existing California state law governs the issuance and processing of ballots.

The panel also cited the government’s acknowledgment that California has millions of registered voters and processes ballots on a schedule aligned with that scale. It added the government’s delay in communicating to the court the relief it desired.

After reviewing arguments, the court on Monday rejected the Justice Department’s demand for an order forcing California to set aside the 20,000 mail ballots, which the department claims may have been cast by non-citizens. The ruling was jurisdictional: the appeals court said it did not have the authority to rule on the lawsuit before the district court did.

The Trump administration had urged the appeals court to intervene in the Justice Department’s lawsuit, which is before a U.S. district court in California. District Judge David Carter set a hearing for Tuesday in the case. The administration appealed when the hearing was not scheduled sooner, leading to an unusual Sunday hearing before the appeals court.

The Justice Department demanded that California election officials access a flash drive provided by the department, review a list of people the department claims are not citizens and promise to remove any ballots allegedly cast by those people. When California did not comply with the Justice Department’s full demand within two days, the Justice Department filed suit in federal court in California.

At the Sunday hearing, government attorney Matthew Donnelly said the administration’s lists were compiled through a “rigorous process.” Judge Mark Bennett of the appeals court questioned whether state election officials could legally disqualify voters without “extraordinary proof” by the federal government.

“Congress and the California Legislature have said non-citizens can’t vote,” Bennett said Sunday. “This lawsuit is about, ‘We don’t like the way you’re sorting citizens from non-citizens.’ I just don’t see [federal law] telling California how to do the sorting.”

The suit is the latest effort by the Trump administration to involve the federal government in how states run elections. The White House has lost more than two dozen court challenges over the past year to force states to release their voter rolls.

The appeals court’s ruling did not resolve whether non-citizens cast the 20,000 ballots at issue. It held only that the appeals court could not rule on the lawsuit before the district court does. The case returns to Judge Carter for a Tuesday-afternoon hearing on the department’s claims; California did not comply with the Justice Department’s full demand within two days.