Supreme Court Weighs New Bid to Restrict Mail Ballots Before Midterms

The Supreme Court is weighing a third emergency request from the Trump administration to let the U.S. Postal Service enforce new restrictions on mail-in ballots for the November midterms, even as ballots are already landing in voters' mailboxes in several states. Briefing on the request closed Wednesday evening, and a decision could come within days.

The application, filed by Solicitor General D. John Sauer and docketed as No. 26A305, asks the justices to lift a preliminary injunction that U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani issued September 4 in Boston, which bars USPS from requiring states to comply with a rule redesigning ballot envelopes and screening voters against federal lists. The Postal Service filed a reply brief Thursday, the same day this edition went to press, after a coalition of 24 states and the District of Columbia urged the court Tuesday to leave the block in place.

The dispute, by the numbers

• 24 states and the District of Columbia are challenging the rule, led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta and joined by Pennsylvania's governor.
• More than 20 amicus briefs have been filed at the Supreme Court since September 6, including one from the entire Senate Democratic Caucus and another from bipartisan former members of Congress.
• North Carolina began mailing ballots September 4, Alabama followed September 9, and at least five more states are scheduled to begin the week of September 13.
• The general election is November 3 — roughly seven weeks from the current filing deadline the justices are working against.

How the fight reached the court

The dispute traces to a executive order President Trump signed March 31, which directed the Department of Homeland Security to compile state-by-state citizenship lists and ordered the Postal Service to draft rules tightening how mail ballots move through the system. Democratic-led states sued immediately, and lower courts initially blocked the order before it had a specific rule to enforce.

On August 24, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the states' suit was premature because USPS had not yet finalized a rule, clearing the way for the agency to act. Two days later, USPS published its final rule on ballot mail for federal elections, which requires ballot envelopes to carry unique tracking barcodes and requires states to upload lists of mail-ballot recipients to a federal portal before USPS will deliver them. States sued again the same week, and Talwani granted a temporary restraining order, then converted it into the preliminary injunction now before the high court after finding, according to court filings, that the technology needed to run the portal does not yet exist and that a government whistleblower had warned of what one filing described as "potentially catastrophic" problems with the rollout.

This marks the third time this year the administration has asked the Supreme Court to intervene in the fight, part of a broader wave of 2026 election litigation reaching the Court's emergency docket.

Who would be affected

The 24 plaintiff states span much of the country's population, including California, New York, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, along with smaller states such as Vermont, Delaware and Maine. Election officials in those states would need to build compliance systems — reformatting envelopes, generating barcodes and transmitting voter rosters to USPS — on a timeline of days rather than months, since ballots are already in transit or about to be printed for the general election.

Groups representing overseas and military voters, older voters and people with disabilities who rely most heavily on mail ballots have told the court they are especially exposed if the rule takes effect abruptly. Tammy Patrick, chief program officer at the nonpartisan Election Center, said no state currently administers its elections in a way that matches what the rule demands, calling full compliance before November effectively impossible.

What both sides are saying

In his filing, Sauer told the justices the timing is urgent because ballots already printed and mailed cannot be recalled. "Once those ballot envelopes enter the mailstream, there is no retrieving them," he wrote, arguing the rule imposes only "reasonable preparation requirements" and leaves states in charge of determining who is eligible to vote by mail.

Bonta, in a statement after Talwani's injunction, said the coalition had "secured longer-term relief that will keep the USPS changes blocked while our case moves forward," and the states' brief to the Supreme Court this week warned that compliance "would be impossible" for many of them, risking that "millions of voters would be unable to vote by mail and some would not be able to vote at all."

"The U.S. Postal Service must deliver all election mail. USPS has no authority in the Constitution or federal law over how states administer mail voting."

That statement came jointly from the plaintiff groups — including the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts and the American Civil Liberties Union, which represents them alongside the Brennan Center for Justice and other civil rights groups — after Talwani's ruling.

What happens next

The application first went to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who handles emergency matters from the First Circuit, but a stay request of this significance is typically referred to the full Court. If the justices grant it, USPS could begin enforcing the barcode and voter-list requirements almost immediately, forcing states already mailing ballots to retrofit their systems mid-stream. If they deny it, Talwani's injunction stays in place and the underlying case over whether the executive order and the USPS rule are constitutional continues in the lower courts, likely past Election Day.

Either outcome leaves the broader legal question — whether a president can direct the Postal Service to set eligibility-adjacent rules for federal elections that have traditionally been left to states and Congress — unresolved for now, meaning further appeals are likely regardless of how the justices rule on the emergency request. SCOTUSblog's tracking of the case shows the docket has drawn filings from election administrators, former lawmakers of both parties and voting-rights groups alike, a sign of how closely the outcome is being watched heading into the fall campaign.