The Supreme Court won’t allow midterm mail-in voting limits : NPR

Election workers process mail-in ballots in Industry, Calif., in June.

Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images

hide caption

toggle caption

Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images

The Supreme Court has sided against President Trump, rejecting his efforts to enact new mail-in voting restrictions for the midterm election.

The ruling released Monday by the high court means the U.S. Postal Service is expected to continue delivering ballots as usual.

Voting by mail has already begun in states including Alabama, North Carolina and Wisconsin, with more soon to follow — including Western states such as Hawaii, Oregon and Washington, where elections are held primarily or fully with mail ballots.

Under the still-blocked USPS plan, which followed an executive order by Trump, states would have had to turn over lists of voters’ names and addresses and have certain specific barcodes on ballot envelopes in order to have them delivered by the mailing agency.

Earlier this month, a federal judge in Boston had issued a preliminary injunction against USPS, blocking the mailing agency from imposing those new ballot requirements on states. The judge found the requirements are likely illegal because the Postal Service has no authority to control mail-in voting. A second federal judge issued another preliminary injunction late Sunday.

Now, a majority of the Supreme Court decided to keep that injunction in place. The court said the Trump administration was unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge.

Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a short concurring opinion, saying “there is at least a fair prospect that the final rule falls within the Postal Service’s statutory authority.” But, he added, “applying the rule in 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.”

Indeed several Republican state election officials, including from the mostly vote-by-mail state of Utah, signed on to a Supreme Court brief, warning that any attempt to carry out the USPS plan now “will almost certainly lead to mistakes, delays, and confusion for both voters and election officials.”