Article Summary
- The U.S. Supreme Court voted 7-2 to leave a lower court order in place blocking the Trump administration from implementing new rules governing mail-in voting.
- The rules would have given the U.S. Postal Service broad authority to regulate mail balloting nationwide and withhold ballots from individuals not included on a federally approved list of confirmed U.S. citizens.
This summary was written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
SPRINGFIELD — The U.S. Supreme Court issued an order late Monday blocking the Trump administration from implementing new rules that would have allowed the Postal Service to block certain people from casting mail-in ballots in the upcoming midterm elections.
In a 7-2 ruling, the justices let stand a lower court order blocking the Postal Service from implementing the rules, saying the government was “unlikely to succeed on the merits” of its appeal.
“The court’s decision is a victory for voters, for democracy, and for the rule of law in this country,” Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul said in a statement. “I am pleased that the Supreme Court affirmed the lower court’s decisions to stop this un-American rule from taking effect and creating chaos before the midterm election.”
The rules in question would have given the Postal Service broad authority to regulate balloting by mail nationwide. They would have required all mail ballot envelopes to conform with uniform standards. They also would have prohibited mail carriers from transmitting ballots to or from any person not listed on a federally approved list of confirmed U.S. citizens eligible to vote.
Raoul was among a coalition of Democratic attorneys general who filed a lawsuit challenging the rules. In August, a federal judge in Massachusetts issued a preliminary injunction blocking the rules, but the Supreme Court overturned that injunction on procedural grounds because the Postal Service had not yet finalized the rules.
Once the rules were finalized, the same Massachusetts judge issued another injunction blocking them from going into effect while the legal challenge made its way through the courts. The Trump administration appealed that ruling, but in an emergency order issued late Monday, the court let the new injunction stand.
The decision came just 10 days before mail-in voting and early in-person voting begins in Illinois, and seven weeks before Election Day on Nov. 3.
David Becker, an election law expert and executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research, said the court’s decision prevented the upcoming election from devolving into chaos.
“These rules would have done nothing for election integrity but would have imposed a vast and expensive new bureaucracy on the states, given massive new responsibilities to a Postal Service already overwhelmed by its current core responsibilities, and disenfranchised thousands if not millions of eligible voters,” he said in a statement.
The court did not issue a majority opinion, which is often the case with emergency orders. Justice Brett Kavanaugh issued a concurring opinion saying he believes there is a “fair prospect” the rules fall within the Postal Service’s statutory authority, but that state and local authorities do not have time to implement them before the 2026 elections.
Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas issued a dissenting opinion saying they believe the government was likely to succeed on the merits of its appeal.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
