From The Washington Post:
Supreme Court blocks sweeping mail ballot restrictions for midterm elections
The Trump administration had said its new restrictions were necessary to prevent fraud.
About one-third of voters used mail ballots in 2024.
In a brief order Monday evening, the majority did not explain its reasoning for leaving in place a lower court order blocking the administration’s plans. The majority wrote that the Trump administration was “unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge” to the lower court order.
Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote in a concurrence that in his view, there was “at least a fair prospect” the administration’s actions were within its authority. But, he continued, it “would be arbitrary and capricious” to impose the changes in the midterms because state and local authorities would not have time to implement them.
Two other conservative justices — Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Clarence Thomas — dissented from the high court’s decision Monday evening.
Alito, joined by Thomas, wrote that organizations challenging the plans probably lacked standing and that states doing so were making arguments unlikely to succeed.
States had said there were practical issues involved in implementing the administration’s changes so close to the midterms, Alito wrote, adding that he took that problem seriously. But he wrote that states challenging the plans and the courts “bear a substantial share of the blame” for the timing, saying the litigation and earlier court orders had effectively shaped the calendar.
Election administrators in a number of states run by Democrats and Republicans alike have said it would be extremely challenging — if not impossible — to implement the administration’s changes with less than two months to go before elections. Some states have already started sending out mail-in ballots and others will soon follow.
An anonymous federal whistleblower also warned that voters could be disenfranchised and ballot delivery disrupted, asserting that the system created to implement the plan was rushed and did not undergo adequate testing. The Trump administration disputes that characterization.
The Supreme Court’s decision ends — for now — a dizzying legal battle among blue states, voting rights groups and the administration that has ping-ponged through the courts in recent weeks.
The Trump administration says the new restrictions, which were laid out in a March executive order, are necessary to prevent voter fraud. Trump has long claimed without evidence that voter fraud — particularly by noncitizens and with mail ballots — is rampant, but studies have found such instances are rare.
Under Trump’s plan, states would have to use ballot envelopes containing barcodes to combat fraud, and they would have to provide the federal government with lists of voters who are eligible to receive mail ballots.
The U.S. Postal Service would not deliver ballots in states that don’t hand over lists and would need to approve ballots in thousands of electoral districts.
States and voting rights groups argued that Trump had overstepped his authority, since the Constitution assigns election administration to the states and Congress. They also said the plan would cause electoral chaos.
The Rule would disrupt the administration of mail voting mid-election and disenfranchise eligible voters nationwide, including voters in all-mail states like Colorado and Utah and elderly, rural, and disabled voters who must vote by mail,” the League of Women Voters and other groups wrote in their filing with the high court.
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold (D) on Monday evening called the Supreme Court’s ruling a victory for democracy. Colorado is among the two dozen states that sued over the postal rules.
“Trump’s attempt to sabotage the 2026 elections has failed,” she said in a statement.
The voting rights groups that challenged the rule changes also celebrated.
“This executive order was a blatant power grab designed to silence voters and undermine our elections, but it failed because the people and the law were on our side,” said Virginia Kase Solomón, president of the nonprofit group Common Cause.
The White House and Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday night about the Supreme Court’s ruling.
The high court’s order dealt only with applying the changes to the upcoming midterms. The case now returns to the lower courts, where legal fights will continue over whether the order can be implemented in future elections, including the 2028 presidential contest. That legal battle could return to the Supreme Court in the years ahead.
The administration last week had asked the justices to overturn a preliminary injunction by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, an Obama appointee in Massachusetts, that blocked its plan from going into effect.
“The Rule ensures that States remain responsible for determining voter eligibility and eligibility to vote by mail, and it does not dictate ballot content, mailing or receipt deadlines, or ballot-counting procedures,” the appeal said. “The Rule thus plainly does not seize control of States’ administration of elections — it simply imposes reasonable preparation requirements for certain election-related mail.”
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