Supreme Court blocks Trump administration restrictions on mail ballots ahead of midterms

Emergency stay rejected by justices

On 14 September 2026, the US Supreme Court declined an emergency request from the Justice Department to lift lower court injunctions blocking new Postal Service regulations on mail voting. The 7-2 order allows states to distribute and process mail-in ballots under established procedures ahead of the 3 November 2026 midterm elections. The court issued a brief order stating that the government was unlikely to succeed on the merits of its appeal against the preliminary injunction.

State and local election officials do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before the elections.

Legal arguments and dissenting opinions

Justice Brett Kavanaugh concurred with the majority alongside Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, writing that while the regulation might fall within Postal Service statutory authority in the future, enforcing it for the 2026 elections would be arbitrary and capricious. Conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas were the only members of the nine-justice bench to dissent publicly. Alito wrote that the Postal Service possesses broad regulatory authority over the mail and compared the legal claims brought by challengers to a Hail Mary pass unlikely to be completed.

Disputed postal rules and technical risks

The blocked measure originated from a presidential executive order signed in late March titled Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections. Under the policy, state election offices had to submit rosters of mail ballot recipients to a federal online portal and use standardized envelopes with unique barcodes. The Postal Service would have gained the authority to refuse delivery for ballots lacking approved envelopes or associated with voters not verified on the submitted lists. State officials and voting-rights organizations challenged the measure in court, pointing to a Postal Service whistleblower report that found the portal was not properly constructed and that a single barcode error could reject an entire batch of mail, potentially leaving millions of ballots undelivered. The administration maintained that the rules were necessary to prevent voter fraud.

Court challenges and election timeline

The Supreme Court ruling follows a sequence of legal defeats for the administration across federal courts. US District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston issued a preliminary injunction in late August, calling the rule a probably unconstitutional regulation whose compliance was practically impossible for the 2026 midterms, a ruling affirmed by a federal appeals court in Massachusetts. US District Judge Carl Nichols in Washington, D.C. also ruled against the policy on 13 September. Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar welcomed the Supreme Court decision, stating that elections belong to the American people.

Democratic Secretaries of State applaud the court on upholding this fundamental principle, and we stand ready to fight any attempt to cause chaos, fear, and intimidation in our elections.

Voting by mail accounts for roughly one-third of all ballots cast in US elections. Election authorities in Alabama, North Carolina, and Wisconsin had already started mailing ballots under standard procedures during the week before the ruling. The midterms will decide control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, where Republicans currently hold narrow majorities. The White House and the Postal Service did not respond to requests for comment following the decision.