Attorney General Bonta Secures Major Victories from State’s Highest Court, Confirming Authority to Issue Binding Directives to Riverside Sheriff and Ordering Sheriff to Return[...]

OAKLAND - California Attorney General Rob Bonta today issued the following statement on the California Supreme Court decisions in Bonta v. Bianco and Cervantes v. Bianco, two cases that arose out of Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco's unfounded criminal investigation into the November 2025 Special Election. In February 2026, Sheriff Bianco obtained facially deficient search warrants to seize election materials based on affidavits that did not establish probable cause that a crime had been committed. Attorney General Bonta directed Sheriff Bianco to pause the investigation, but the Sheriff instead proceeded to seize approximately 650,000 ballots and to defy the Attorney General's directives. In response to Sheriff Bianco's refusal to comply, Attorney General Bonta filed a lawsuit to enforce his supervisory authority, while Riverside County voters separately sued to have their ballots returned to the county registrar. To this day, the Sheriff has provided no evidence of criminal misconduct in the 2025 election.

"Today's rulings bring important clarity for our constitutional system in California. I'm grateful that our State Supreme Court reaffirmed my authority as Attorney General to supervise county sheriffs. I take my responsibility to exercise that authority in the public interest seriously. This was an extraordinary situation that required extraordinary action," said Attorney General Bonta. "Election fraud can and should be investigated. But misuse of criminal investigative tools - without any evidence that a crime was committed - needlessly undermines trust in our elections system and in law enforcement. After the Sheriff took the extraordinary step of obtaining warrants to seize control over voted ballots, I made a modest request to him: pause your investigation, preserve all evidence, and provide the information needed for my office to review the allegations. Instead, Sheriff Bianco pressed forward with the seizure of hundreds of thousands of ballots. The Court has now made clear that this kind of defiance cannot stand, that the Attorney General has the authority to intervene when sheriffs take improper action, and that voted ballots belong in the custody of elections officials. I encourage Californians to make their voices heard and vote early in the fast-approaching November 3 midterm elections, with the confidence of knowing that their voted ballots will never again be subject to physical seizure by rogue county sheriffs."

In Bonta v. Bianco, the California Supreme Court today affirmed that the Attorney General has broad constitutional and statutory authority to supervise county sheriffs and issued an order requiring Sheriff Bianco to comply with the Attorney General's directives. The ruling is consistent with arguments Attorney General Bonta made in his reply brief, which noted that the California Constitution gives the Attorney General "direct supervision" over sheriffs and that state law authorizes the Attorney General to direct the activities of any sheriff "consistent with the Attorney General's duty to see that the laws of the State are uniformly and adequately enforced."

In Cervantes v. Bianco, voters claimed that Sheriff Bianco's seizure of their ballots violated the Elections Code. Attorney General Bonta filed an amicus brief arguing that the seized ballots should be returned to the Registrar of Voters. The California Supreme Court reaffirmed the important principle, first enacted by our Legislature over a century ago, that voted ballots must "remain in the elections official's custody even in the event of a criminal investigation" to "safeguard[] the integrity of our elections by protecting ballots from alteration, tampering, or other improper interference." As a result of this decision, no state court should ever again issue a search warrant allowing non-elections officials to physically seize voted ballots from elections officials.

Last week, Governor Newsom signed Senate Bill 1418, legislation sponsored by Attorney General Bonta that strengthens protections for election materials. Attorney General Bonta alerted the Court to this change and explained that the new law will protect not only voted ballots, but other election-related materials seized by Sheriff Bianco.