Supreme Court Blocks Trump Administration Plan to Screen Mail-In Ballots

 

Supreme Court Blocks Trump Administration Plan to Screen Mail-In Ballots

 

The Trump administration had asked the justices to allow a new Postal Service plan to screen ballots just weeks before the midterm elections.

 

Abbie VanSickle

By Abbie VanSickle

Reporting from Washington

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/14/us/politics/supreme-court-trump-mail-voting.html

Published Sept. 14, 2026

Updated Sept. 15, 2026, 12:25 a.m. ET

 

The Supreme Court on Monday blocked a Trump administration plan to dramatically change how Americans vote by mail in the lead-up to the midterm elections, a major loss for President Trump, who has long claimed without evidence that fraud is rampant in mail voting.

 

The ruling was a resounding win for Democratic-led states and voting rights groups, which had argued that the plan was unconstitutional and an existential threat to the democratic process.

 

The Trump administration’s efforts, they had said, would introduce chaos and confusion as early voting gears up in many states.

 

Still, the weekslong legal tussle over the issue may have sown its own kind of confusion, a victory of sorts for Mr. Trump as he seeks to cast doubt on the integrity of the vote in an election his party might lose.

 

In a one-paragraph explanation, the court’s majority wrote that the government was “unlikely to succeed on the merits” at the conclusion of additional litigation on the issue.

 

The majority’s order was unsigned, which is typical in emergency rulings. It gave no vote count.

 

Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, one of the court’s conservatives, wrote a one-paragraph concurrence. Writing for himself alone, he said that there was “at least a fair prospect” that new mail ballot rules issued by the Postal Service fell within its purview under federal statutes, but that allowing those changes so close to the midterms “would be arbitrary and capricious.” State and local elections officials, he wrote, would not have “sufficient time to reasonably implement” the changes.

 

In an eight-page dissent, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, wrote that he would have allowed the Trump administration plan to go into effect for the midterms. Justice Alito called the legal challenge a “Hail Mary” pass that was unlikely to succeed and that he believed the administration would ultimately win the case because the Postal Service has “broad authority to regulate the mail.”

 

“Today is a good day for democracy, the rule of law, and the American people looking to exercise their Constitutional right to vote,” said Governor Gavin Newsom of California, one of the Democratic-led states that challenged the Trump administration’s plan. “Finally, fifty days out, and the American people have certainty when it comes to our country’s electoral process: Voting is safe, vote-by-mail is accessible to any and all who need it.”

 

The American Civil Liberties Union, which represented voting rights organizations in the case, celebrated the court’s decision.

 

“The president does not run our elections, the Postal Service does not get to decide whose ballot counts, and voters — not the White House — will decide November’s elections,” Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, said in a statement.

 

Even some Republican election officials cheered the ruling.

 

Ricky Hatch, the Republican clerk in Weber County, Utah, said he felt “relief.” Utah almost exclusively votes by mail, and Mr. Hatch had been preparing a contingency plan to abandon mail voting if the Supreme Court allowed the Postal Service to restrict the practice.

 

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The battle over the Trump administration’s plan to change mail-in voting has played out over the past few weeks in a dizzying series of legal developments, even as states began sending out ballots.

 

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Trump administration lawyers had urged the justices to step in and clear the way for its plan to use the Postal Service to screen ballot envelopes after they are submitted by state elections officials. The new rules would have required states to submit lists of voters approved to receive mail ballots. The Postal Service would then have delivered mail ballots only to the voters on the lists.

 

The plan would also have required states to use an envelope approved by the Postal Service, including a unique bar code for each voter. Some states have argued that redesigning ballots so close to the election would have been challenging or perhaps impossible, causing delays.

 

The Trump administration described the changes in court filings as “only modest envelope-design and addressee-information requirements” that fell within the Postal Service’s mandate under federal law.

 

But the Democratic-led states and voting rights groups challenging the plan had urged the justices to block it, arguing that changing the Postal Service requirements so close to the election threatened to cause “catastrophic harms,” leading to mass confusion and “a significant risk that millions more voters would be denied the ability to vote.”

 

The challengers also asserted that in some states, it would be “impossible” to comply with the new Postal Service rules in time for the midterm elections, including in states like Alabama, Delaware and North Carolina, which have already mailed ballots to voters.

 

They also noted that a new web portal that the Postal Service plan would require states to use to upload voter data remained under construction. U.S.P.S. officials have said that they expect it to launch soon and be available for states that choose to use it.

 

The chief election officials in seven G.O.P.-controlled states had also filed a brief in the case. The Republican secretaries of state in Kentucky, North Dakota, South Dakota, Georgia, New Hampshire and Kansas, as well as the lieutenant governor of Utah, urged the court not to allow major changes so close to the midterms.

 

“Attempting to implement the rule now will almost certainly lead to mistakes, delays and confusion for both voters and election officials,” the brief stated.

 

The fight is rooted in an executive order signed by Mr. Trump in late March, which ordered the Postal Service to create new guidelines for voting by mail. A number of Democratic state attorneys general, voting rights groups and national Democratic leaders sued to challenge the order, arguing that it violated the Constitution, which gives states and Congress responsibility for elections.

 

That set off a series of legal developments, including two previous emergency applications to the justices. On Aug. 24, the Supreme Court, over the dissent of the court’s three liberal justices, had allowed the Postal Service to proceed with planning, finding that a temporary freeze on the plan by a lower-court judge was premature.

 

In that emergency ruling, the court’s conservatives found that the Democratic-led states that sued had not been harmed by voting rules that had not taken effect. But the majority had cautioned that the ruling was not a final decision about whether the administration’s order was legal. “On that score,” they wrote, “time will tell.”

 

Nick Corasaniti, Jack Healy, Laurel Rosenhall and Adam Sella contributed reporting.

 

Abbie VanSickle covers the United States Supreme Court for The Times. She is a lawyer and has an extensive background in investigative reporting.