Supreme Court Blocks Trump Administration’s Postal Service Mail-Ballot Rule

The Supreme Court on Monday refused to let a Postal Service regulation on mail-in ballots take effect, a rebuff to the Trump administration seven weeks before Election Day. NBC News reported the brief, unsigned order as a 7-2 split, with Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissenting; PBS’s Amy Howe noted that on the emergency docket the majority does not sign or necessarily record its vote, so the exact count is not certain.

The rule would have required states to submit lists of eligible voters to the Postal Service, which would verify that ballots were going to people on the lists before delivery, NBC reported. States would also have had to follow directions on envelope design, and noncompliant envelopes would have been returned to election officials. The Postal Service typically has no such role. President Donald Trump issued a March executive order on elections after Congress did not pass his SAVE America Act, NBC said.

California and other states, along with groups led by the League of Women Voters, challenged the rule. U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Massachusetts blocked it, ruling that the Postal Service had no authority to issue it and warning of “significant disenfranchisement,” NBC reported. She said the administration offered no evidence the rule was needed to combat fraud.

The majority gave no detailed reasoning, but Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a brief concurrence. He said there is a “fair prospect” that the Postal Service has authority to issue the rule, NBC reported, but agreed it had to be blocked because it came so close to the election. Alito dissented, arguing that the federal government had the better argument; he said the states’ implementation concerns gave him pause but were not enough to change his vote. SCOTUSblog co-founder Amy Howe told PBS that Kavanaugh’s opinion leaves the door open for the administration to try again with more lead time, though it would still need two more votes beyond Kavanaugh, Alito and Thomas.

North Carolina began sending ballots Sept. 4 and other states followed, NBC noted, and questions remained about whether the Postal Service could carry out the rule. A whistleblower complaint said its ballot-checking system was flawed. “Today’s decision is a victory for our democracy and a powerful affirmation of the rule of law,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said. The League of Women Voters’ Celina Stewart had called the rule “an extraordinary attempt to interfere with voting in all 50 states.”

Trump criticized the justices on social media, PBS reported, saying they were “bullied and cajoled by the radical left” and had “set America back at least 100 years.” He wrote, “These are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court.” PBS noted that Trump has claimed widespread mail-in fraud without offering real evidence. The administration’s position, repeated by Attorney General Todd Blanche, is that the goal is “one person placing one vote” by an eligible voter.

For election officials, the order brought relief. Tammy Patrick of the National Association of Election Administrators, a former Arizona election official, told PBS that officials felt “a collective sigh of relief” because implementing the rule this late would have been nearly impossible. “Whatever rules were in place yesterday are in place today all across the country,” she said, advising voters to request and return ballots early and check state and local election websites. Blanche said investigations into illegal voting will continue.