Cervantes v. Bianco

Cervantes v. Bianco is the case in which all seven justices of the Supreme Court of California agreed, on 24 September 2026, that the Riverside County sheriff, Chad Bianco, had no lawful power to take cast ballots from the county registrar. Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero wrote the opinion and Justice Goodwin Liu filed a concurrence.

Four Riverside County voters petitioned the Court. The ballots, about 650,000, came from the 4 November 2025 special election on Proposition 50, which adopted the Legislature's congressional map. A community group had claimed a gap of about 45,896 between polling workers' intake estimates and the certified count; the registrar put any difference at about 103 votes, and all sides agreed the claimed gap could not have changed the result. Bianco obtained search warrants in February 2026.

the Court held that Elections Code section 15551(d), under which cast ballots may 'in no event' be removed from the custody of the elections official, prevails over the general search-warrant statute. Its peremptory writ sets a state-law limit on any seizure of cast ballots after the 3 November count.