Supreme Court Blocks Trump's USPS Mail-Voting Rule — SkimNews
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- Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration's USPS mail-ballot restrictions for the 2026 midterms, keeping a Boston federal judge's preliminary injunction in place after a second federal judge issued another late Sunday
- Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh concurred but wrote that applying the rule for the 2026 elections would be 'arbitrary and capricious' because state and local officials lack sufficient time to implement it
- Conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented and would have granted the administration's request to pause the Boston judge's ruling
- The blocked USPS plan would have required states to turn over voters' names and addresses and place specific barcodes on ballot envelopes for USPS to deliver them — requirements a federal judge found likely illegal because the Postal Service has no authority to control mail-in voting
- Mail voting has already begun in Alabama, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Western states including Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington, which conduct elections primarily or fully by mail
- 24 mainly Democratic-led states plus Washington, D.C. sued to block the rule, while several Republican state election officials, including from Utah, signed a Supreme Court brief warning the plan would cause 'mistakes, delays, and confusion'
- Trump's stated rationale of stopping non-citizen voting lacks supporting evidence — the administration provided courts no proof of mail-voting fraud — and Trump himself voted by mail in Florida this year despite publicly attacking the practice
Why it matters: The ruling preserves the existing mail-voting status quo for the midterms, protecting the roughly one-third of voters who cast ballots by mail, with mail voting already underway in multiple states. The legal fight continues over how USPS may implement the rule for future federal elections, and the lack of fraud evidence cited by Trump undercuts the administration's central justification.
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