The Supreme Court on Monday rejected the Trump administration’s bid to enforce new U.S. Postal Service rules that would have let USPS withhold mail-in ballots from voters who didn’t appear on state-submitted lists ahead of November’s midterms. The 7-2 order found the administration “is unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge” to a lower court’s injunction blocking the rule.
What exactly did the rule the Court blocked actually do?
The USPS rule stemmed from a Trump executive order on mail voting and would have required states to upload the identities of voters receiving mail ballots into a Postal Service portal, with ballot envelope designs subject to USPS pre-approval. In practice, it would have given the Postal Service the power to withhold potentially millions of ballots from voters whose information didn’t match state-submitted lists. Election officials, including some Republicans, warned that implementing the system this close to the midterms risked “chaos and mass disenfranchisement” rather than the fraud prevention the administration said it was designed for.
How did the justices split, and why does Kavanaugh’s position matter?
Only two justices dissented: Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas. Alito wrote that the Postal Service “has broad authority to regulate the mail” and likely does have the power to enforce the rule, and that practical concerns raised by election officials, while real, weren’t “enough to convince me” the rule should stay blocked. Justice Kavanaugh sided with the majority in blocking the rule for this election, but wrote separately to explain why: he said there’s “at least a fair prospect that the final rule falls within the Postal Service’s statutory authority,” meaning he isn’t convinced the rule is unlawful in principle. His objection is narrower and purely about timing: applying it in the 2026 midterms specifically would be “arbitrary and capricious” under federal administrative law because state and local election officials don’t have enough time left to reasonably implement it before voters go to the polls.
Is this the final word on Trump’s mail voting order?
No. This ruling addresses one specific piece of a larger fight: whether USPS can enforce this particular rule before November’s midterms. The broader legal question of whether Trump’s mail-voting executive order is lawful at all is still being litigated in lower courts, and the Court’s own order explicitly framed this as a decision that the administration is “unlikely to succeed,” not a final ruling on the merits. Back in August, the Supreme Court had actually given Trump’s order a narrower interim win, lifting an earlier injunction on other parts of the plan — meaning this isn’t a case where the Court has consistently ruled one way. White House spokesperson Lauren Bis defended the rules as “commonsense measures to protect the security of mail-in ballots and ensure only Americans vote in American elections,” and said election officials have had “ample time to prepare,” but didn’t say whether the administration plans to pursue the underlying case further.
Sources: CNN via KESQ · Bloomberg · NBC News · SCOTUSblog
Update: Trump calls the ruling a “complete and total disaster” in a lengthy Truth Social post
Update, Sept. 15: Trump posted an extended reaction to the ruling on Truth Social Tuesday morning, calling it “another bad decision” from a Court he says “has really let our Country down.” He singled out Justices Alito and Thomas — the two dissenters — as “legends,” and argued the ruling “makes cheating by the Radical Left ‘Dumocrats,’ on Mail-In Ballots, a much easier thing to do.” He also used the post to revisit two other recent rulings he’s unhappy with, on tariffs and birthright citizenship, calling the tariffs decision costly “for many years to come” and the birthright citizenship ruling “a complete and total disaster for America.”
Trump closed the post by framing his criticism of the Court as a reluctant duty: “It is not easy for me to write this criticism of the United States Supreme Court – it will likely cost me dearly for years to come – but I feel it my obligation and duty, as President, to do so for the America we love!” The post had drawn 657 ReTruths and 1,700 likes as of publication. Neither the Supreme Court nor Chief Justice John Roberts has responded to Trump’s remarks.
Related from BeezLoop: Judge Cancels Order Blocking Postal Work on Trump's Mail-In Voting Rule, The Supreme Court Let the Voter Purge Database Run and Republicans to Hold First-Ever Midterm Convention in Dallas, Dubbed 'Trumpapalooza'.
