Supreme Court rejects Trump administration's mail ballot rule for 2026 midterms
The US Supreme Court on Monday rejected President Donald Trump's plan to change how mail ballots are sent to voters ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, blocking a proposal that would have given the US Postal Service (USPS) the power to withhold potentially millions of mail ballots.
In a brief unsigned order, the court said the administration "is unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge" to a lower court's preliminary injunction that had halted the rule. The majority did not detail its reasoning further.
The proposal, introduced under an executive order Trump signed in March, would have required states to submit lists of eligible voters to the Postal Service. The USPS would then verify that ballots are being sent only to voters on those lists before delivering them. Under the rule, the Postal Service could refuse to send out ballots that did not comply with new standards or that were addressed to voters not listed as eligible. The administration had described the change as a "modest" adjustment to postal regulations intended to protect against voter fraud; the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday's ruling.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who joined the majority, wrote a concurring opinion saying the rule may ultimately be legal in the long run, but that applying it to the 2026 elections would be "arbitrary and capricious in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act because state and local election officials do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before the elections."
Justice Samuel Alito, in a dissent, said the Postal Service "has broad authority to regulate the mail" and likely has the power to enforce the restrictions Trump called for. The court ruled 7 to 2 against the administration.
The case reached the Supreme Court after the Trump administration appealed a federal district court's injunction blocking the rule. The administration had argued that the lower court's order was too broad, but the Supreme Court's ruling left that injunction in place.
Election officials had warned that the rule could create chaos and disenfranchise voters. In one instance during the brief period when courts had not yet blocked the rule, the USPS rejected Leon County, Florida's ballot design because the printed notation required on return mail was 0.014 of an inch too small.
In response to the ruling, a spokesperson for a coalition of voting-rights groups said, "This ruling affirms what our Constitution has always held: Elections belong to the American people, not a desperate man in Washington."
No party to the case has indicated whether an appeal will be pursued. The Supreme Court's order is final for the 2026 election cycle, but the legal questions over the rule's broader validity remain unresolved.