In blow to Trump, Supreme Court blocks mail ballot restrictions from taking effect in 2026

This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

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The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday night blocked the U.S. Postal Service from imposing new restrictions on voting by mail this November, delivering a fatal blow to President Donald Trump’s attempts to inject more White House control over the midterm election.

In a brief, unsigned ruling, the court kept in place a lower court’s freeze on the restrictions. “The Government is unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge” to the lower court’s ruling, the justices wrote.

Under the proposed restrictions, the Postal Service would have been able to block delivery of ballots that weren’t on a prereviewed list or met specific design requirements. But as a result of Monday’s decision, mail voting in the 2026 election will largely function the same way it has in previous elections.

The ruling leaves open the question of whether the restrictions are legal overall and can be implemented in future elections. But the structure of the decision suggests that a majority of the justices are skeptical. Only two justices — Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas — joined a dissent arguing that the rules were likely to be upheld and should be allowed to proceed for the upcoming election.

In a concurrence with the main decision, Justice Brett Kavanaugh also wrote that “there is at least a fair prospect that the final rule falls within the Postal Service’s statutory authority” but that “state and local election officials do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before the elections.”

How we got here

The Supreme Court ruling marked the culmination of a frenzied, monthslong legal battle over Trump’s effort to impose tighter restrictions on American elections, even though some states have already sent out mail ballots and people have begun to return them.

It began in March, when Trump issued an executive order meant to restrict mail voting. Trump’s order directed the U.S. Postal Service to set up a new system that would allow the agency to block delivery of mail ballots to voters not on a list presubmitted by state election officials.

It quickly prompted a slew of lawsuits by 23 Democrat-led states, voting rights groups, and Democratic organizations that temporarily put the brakes on the effort.

In June, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani found that some of the order’s key provisions were unconstitutional and blocked them from going into effect for this year’s elections. The Trump administration fought Talwani’s decision and brought the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In late August, the Supreme Court lifted Talwani’s injunction against the order on narrow procedural grounds, finding it had been issued prematurely because the Postal Service had not yet issued the final rules when she blocked the agency from enacting its plan.

But shortly before the Supreme Court justices ruled, the Postal Service unveiled its final rules in a 95-page plan. The court’s order meant it would quickly go into effect, creating widespread confusion among election officials. But Talwani again put the Postal Service plans on hold.

The Postal Service rules require states to use a new online federal government system to send it a list of all voters who should receive mail ballots, though that portal is not yet available. The Postal Service would refuse to send ballots to anyone not on the list. Ballot envelopes would also have to meet new design standards, including unique barcodes that have to be checked by the Postal Service.

A bipartisan group of elections officials across the country have warned that they have neither the time nor money and resources to comply with the new rules if they were to be put in place for the November election. Some states said their laws would prevent them from following the Postal Service rules. Others said they didn’t have the time to redesign their ballot envelopes.

In court filings, the Trump administration argued that the Postal Service plan was a legal effort by the federal government to prevent voter fraud in the election.

The Postal Service defended its efforts as a nonpartisan attempt to ensure people could vote by mail if they wanted to this fall.

“Regardless of political party or perspective, we share a common goal: ensuring that Americans can have confidence that their election mail will be handled securely and delivered reliably should their election officials choose to use the mail for ballot delivery,” the Postal Service said in a statement.

A USPS whistleblower warns of disenfranchisement

The Trump administration rules created significant unease within the Postal Service. In early September, an anonymous whistleblower within the agency came forward to describe the system as “secretive, rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed.”

The whistleblower warned that the Postal Service had not done proper testing on the system and that it could prevent millions of Americans from receiving mail ballots this November.

One of the biggest concerns raised by the whistleblower was the possibility that the Postal Service system could reject millions of mail ballots from reaching voters.

As planned, the Postal Service system would take a random sample of bulk mail ballots going to voters to make sure the envelopes all contained required information, including special bar codes tied to each voter. If the computers found that one ballot failed the check, even if it was a mistake, the Postal Service system would reject all the ballots in the mailing and send them back to the state.

That, the whistleblower account warned, could lead to a “catastrophic failure” that prevents millions of Americans from voting.

Voting rights groups and the coalition of states and the District of Columbia renewed their legal fight in Talwani’s court after the Postal Service issued its final rules at the end of August, arguing that the president had no authority to try and regulate mail ballots.

Talwani agreed. In her 11-page decision, she concluded that Trump’s proposals were an unconstitutional attempt to usurp powers from the states over elections.

“The court is unaware of, and no party has proffered, any delegation Congress has made that would permit the USPS to regulate election mail,” Talwani wrote.

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