Supreme Court Nixes Trump Administration’s Mail‑In Ballot Restrictions Ahead of Midterms

The justices gathered in Washington last week and, by a vote of seven to two, refused to let the Trump administration’s new postal rule take effect. In plain language, the United States Postal Service may not start demanding that each state hand over a list of "eligible" mail‑in voters before it can deliver a ballot.

The proposed rule, tucked into a March executive order titled “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections,” would have turned the USPS into a gatekeeper. States would have been required to submit voter lists, and any ballot sent to a name not on the list could be rejected. The Postal Service has never performed that function, and election officials warned it would cripple voting by mail, which is already under way in several states.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing alongside Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, said the government’s challenge to a lower‑court injunction was unlikely to succeed on the merits. He added that even if the rule were within the Postal Service’s statutory authority, rolling it out for the 2026 elections would be “arbitrary and capricious” because states simply don’t have the time to comply.

Chief Justice John Roberts and the other five liberal justices joined the majority. The two dissenters – conservatives Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas – argued that the court should have let the rule proceed, claiming the states lacked standing since the policy had not yet been implemented.

For Democrats and voting‑rights advocates, the decision is a relief. “Today, Donald Trump lost another battle in his unconstitutional war to choose his own voters, and the American people are winners,” Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar wrote. He framed the ruling as a reaffirmation that elections belong to the people, not to a desperate politician.

The battle began in the spring, when President Trump signed the executive order that sought to tighten scrutiny of mail‑in ballots. Federal judges quickly blocked most of its provisions, and the administration appealed those rulings to the Supreme Court in July. The high court had previously allowed the rules to move forward on procedural grounds, noting that the challengers hadn’t yet suffered concrete injury.

Adding another twist, a USPS whistleblower recently claimed the online portal meant to process the new voter lists was cobbled together in a hurry and was riddled with technical flaws. Senator Richard Blumenthal cited the warning in a letter to the Postmaster General, saying the agency simply does not have the capacity to safeguard every citizen’s right to vote under the proposed system.

Both the White House and the Postal Service declined to comment on the decision. What’s clear, however, is that for now mail‑in voting will continue as it has been, without the new bureaucratic hurdle that the Trump administration tried to impose.