California's highest court delivered a unanimous rebuke to Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco on Thursday, ruling that he broke state election law when his deputies seized more than 650,000 ballots from the county's registrar of voters earlier this year and ordering him to hand them back immediately.

The California Supreme Court issued two separate rulings against Bianco, who seized the ballots in February after the November 2025 special election on a Democratic-backed congressional redistricting measure. The justices found the sheriff had no legal basis to pull ballots out of the registrar's custody, and separately confirmed that Attorney General Rob Bonta had the constitutional authority to order him to stand down — a power Bianco had defied for months.

"No Need to Introduce This Risk"

Writing for the court, Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero said state law already provides secure channels for challenging vote counts without handing ballots to outside investigators.

"There is no need to introduce this risk because the Elections Code already contains its own comprehensive procedures for recounting ballots without exposing them to tampering."

County election officials had long disputed the premise of Bianco's probe. His office claimed a discrepancy of roughly 45,800 votes justified the seizure; registrar staff said the real gap between the machine tally and the state's certified count was closer to 100 ballots, according to CalMatters' reporting on the case.

Bianco, who mounted an unsuccessful Republican bid for governor this year, did not back down from his allegations even in defeat. In comments carried by CBS News Los Angeles, he said he would comply with the court's order but rejected its reasoning outright: "I will obey the writs. I will not obey the message behind them." He argued the ruling handed the attorney general's office outsized power over local sheriffs and insisted his corruption claims would eventually be vindicated.

Governor Gavin Newsom, whose office championed the redistricting measure at the center of the dispute, cast the decision as a broader defense of the state's voting system. In a statement from his office, Newsom said the ruling "affirms that in California we will defend democracy — using every branch of government," adding that new laws he has signed "add new protections so attacks like this cannot happen again."

The ballots, which had been held at an undisclosed location for months while litigation played out, must now be returned to the Riverside County registrar of voters. No evidence of the fraud Bianco alleged was ever produced during the seizure or the litigation that followed. The case is being watched closely as a test of how far local law enforcement can go in second-guessing certified election results — an issue likely to resurface as more jurisdictions face pressure over vote counts heading into the 2026 midterms.