The US Supreme Court on Monday rejected President Donald Trump’s bid to restrict mail ballots for the midterm elections, capping a flurry of last-minute legal action with voting already underway.
The decision allows states to continue sending out mail ballots under the same processes they’ve used for years and have accounted for nearly a third of votes cast.
The decision also represented a stark defeat for Trump on an issue he consistently has emphasised as vital to ensuring election integrity even though there is virtually no evidence of fraud with mail ballots.
According to the Supreme Court majority, the administration’s push to implement the restrictions this year is likely to lose in court, though the brief emergency order didn’t detail its reasoning. Two justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, publicly dissented.
The Trump administration had asked the justices to clear the way for restrictions before the pivotal November contests for control of Congress.
Alito wrote in his dissent that the Postal Service “has broad authority to regulate the mail” and likely does have the power to enforce Trump’s restrictions.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, meanwhile, agreed that the restrictions should not go into effect for the midterms but indicated he might rule in favor of the Trump administration if the issue comes back before the court at a later time.
Mail ballots already being sent to voters
Election officials have said there was simply no way to carry out a complete overhaul in the weeks before the midterms. Indeed, Alabama, North Carolina and Wisconsin began sending mail ballots to voters over the past week while the new system was still not active.
The Trump administration plan would require states to adopt a uniform envelope style and submit lists of eligible voters to an online portal. The Postal Service could refuse to deliver ballots to states that didn’t comply.
The administration’s efforts had the potential to be especially disruptive in states that send out ballots entirely by mail. Washington’s Secretary of State Steve Hobbs, a Democrat, said the decision means work “to carry out a safe, secure, and accurate election” can continue ”without having to upend our election processes to meet unrealistic ballot mail requirements.”
In Arizona, another largely vote-by-mail state, Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said, “It is crucial for us to continue rejecting the notion that access and security are mutually exclusive when it comes to running strong elections.”
Utah Lt Gov Deidre Henderson, a Republican serving as the state’s chief election officer, said on social media that the Supreme Court’s decision means “Utahns can have confidence that the 2026 election will proceed as normal.”
The White House and Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment but have in the past framed the restrictions as commonsense changes aimed at keeping elections secure.
State officials and voting rights groups pushed back
Democratic state officials and voting rights groups challenged the restrictions in court, arguing that the president has no constitutional authority to set election rules that would “virtually eliminate mail voting on the eve of a major election.”
A whistleblower report, meanwhile, said the postal system’s requirements could lead to millions of mail ballots never being sent, because problems with the not-yet-operational portal meant a single bar code error could result in an entire batch of ballots being tossed out.
Some states don’t have the infrastructure to quickly pivot back to in-person voting, according to court documents.
The League of Women Voters, a plaintiff in the case, called the proposed restrictions “an extraordinary attempt to interfere with voting” and said it would have thrown elections into chaos. “Voters should never be caught in the middle of a political power warfare,” said CEO Celina Stewart.
Lower courts agreed to block Trump’s plan, including a preliminary injunction issued by a judge nominated by the president.
But the Trump administration appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that federal control of the Postal Service allows them to set rules for mail ballot handling and that compliance was possible.
The federal government won an early procedural decision at the Supreme Court, but the justices pointedly did not decide the legality of the plan.
Even though he uses the method to cast his own ballot, including as recently as this year, Trump has long opposed mail voting and falsely blamed it for his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.