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Friday, Mar. 14, 2025

Were nearly half a million registered California voters disqualified from jury duty in one year because they were not citizens?

Carmela Guaglianone, Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting
no

Though around 450,000 residents have been disqualified from jury duty because of their citizenship status over prior one-year periods, according to California officials, there is no evidence that the individuals were all registered voters. State officials have repeatedly refuted the claim that the noncitizen residents were registered to vote. 

California pulls from multiple sources to select residents for jury duty, not just voter registration databases. The state also relies on lists of residents who pay taxes or hold a driver’s license or other state identification, neither of which require U.S. citizenship. 

All states and the federal government require jurors to be United States citizens. Only U.S. citizens are eligible to vote in federal elections and most state and local elections. 

See a full discussion of this at Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting

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Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.

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The Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting is the state’s only independent, nonpartisan and collaborative nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide, data-driven investigative reporting. AZCIR's mission is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable by exposing injustice and systemic inequities through investigative journalism.

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