The Supreme Court Refused to Let the Postal Service Screen Mail Ballots Before the Midterms. Alito and Thomas Dissented, Kavanaugh Said There Simply Isn't Time.
An unsigned, one-paragraph order Monday left in place a Massachusetts judge's injunction against the USPS rule born of Trump's March executive order. Twenty-three states and D.C. had sued, and Justice Kavanaugh wrote that election officials 'do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before the elections.'
The Supreme Court on Monday rejected the Trump administration's bid to let the U.S. Postal Service restrict the delivery of mail ballots this fall, ending, at least for the 2026 midterms, a legal fight that had reached the justices three times in a month. In an unsigned, one-paragraph order, the court said "the government is unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge to the District Court's preliminary injunction," leaving in place a ruling by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani of Massachusetts that had frozen the rule.
Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented. Alito, writing for both, said "the Postal Service has broad authority to regulate the mail" and compared the challengers' constitutional claims to a "Hail Mary pass" unlikely to succeed. Justice Brett Kavanaugh concurred in the result but wrote separately to say there was a "fair prospect" the rule falls within the Postal Service's authority. His problem was the calendar. Applying the rule in this year's elections would be "arbitrary and capricious," Kavanaugh wrote, because state and local election officials "do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before the elections."
The rule grew out of an executive order President Trump signed in March that cited election security and sought to curb absentee voting by mail. The order directed the Department of Homeland Security to build lists of eligible voters for each state and told the Postal Service to deliver election mail only to people on those lists. It also authorized Justice Department investigations and funding cuts for jurisdictions that did not comply. The Postal Service then finalized a rule requiring states to hand over their mail-voter rolls and to use agency-approved envelopes fitted with tracking barcodes; ballots addressed to anyone not on a state's list would not be delivered.
Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia, led by California, sued. Judge Talwani first blocked the executive order itself in June, but on Aug. 24 the Supreme Court lifted that injunction, holding that the challenge had come too early, before the Postal Service had actually issued its rule. Once the rule was final, the states went back to court, and on Sept. 4 Talwani issued a new preliminary injunction, finding the rule likely violated the Constitution's assignment of election administration to the states and was, in any case, impossible to carry out before November. A second federal judge, in Washington state, paused the rule as well. The administration then asked the Supreme Court for emergency relief a third time.
The Solicitor General's office argued that states "cannot use federal mails for elections" and then "insist election mail is exempt from USPS rulemaking authority." The challengers, joined by civil rights groups, countered that "millions of voters would be unable to vote by mail and some would not be able to vote at all," and that federal list-matching errors would strip lawful voters of their ballots. Election officials from both parties had told the court that reprogramming envelope systems and reconciling voter files in a matter of weeks was not realistic, with ballots already going out in several states.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom called the decision "a good day for democracy, the rule of law and the American people looking to exercise their constitutional right to vote." Sophia Lin Lakin of the ACLU, which helped litigate the case, said: "The Constitution gives states and Congress the power to set the rules for federal elections, not the president, and not the Postal Service." The White House did not immediately respond.
The order does not decide whether the Postal Service could impose such a rule in a future election cycle; Kavanaugh's concurrence pointedly left that door open, and the underlying case continues in Talwani's court. But for this November, the practical effect is settled. Ballots will be delivered the way they always have been, and the administration's most aggressive attempt to reshape how Americans vote by mail will not take effect before voters go to the polls.
Originally reported by CBS News.