The administration asks the Supreme Court to clear the way for the Postal Service's mail-ballot rule
The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to let a new Postal Service rule governing mail-in ballots take effect ahead of the midterm elections, asking the justices on Thursday to freeze a district judge's order and to issue an administrative stay while they consider the request.
What happened
The rule change came about as the result of an executive order the president issued March 31 titled "Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections." In the order under challenge, the district judge wrote that under the final rule the Postal Service is refusing to send mail ballots to eligible voters unless state or local election officials submit their mail ballot envelopes and return envelopes and receive advance approval from the Postal Service, without regard to impending deadlines for the November 3, 2026 election. She also wrote that the rule requires election officials to create accounts for a new electronic portal, certify that they have received approval regarding the mail ballot design, and then upload each voter's information to the portal. The administration described its rules as only modest envelope-design and addressee-information requirements and framed its appeal as being about its power to regulate the mail rather than about elections. North Carolina is scheduled to begin mailing out ballots Friday.
The emergency appeal leapfrogged lower courts still considering the case, and the Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to step in immediately with a short-term order allowing the Postal Service to implement the regulations. Under those regulations states must submit lists of their eligible mail voters to USPS through an online portal in order to send ballots through the mail, and if a name does not appear on that list the Postal Service would decline to deliver a mail ballot to that voter; the rule would also require election mail envelopes to carry unique bar codes for each voter. Voter advocacy groups and a coalition of 23 Democratic-led states challenged the March executive order in federal court, arguing that neither the president nor the post office should have a role in choosing which mail ballots reach voters, and states fear that adopting an entirely new mail ballot system weeks before the election could lead to systemic breakdowns in ballots reaching voters.
Why it matters
The rule puts a federal agency between a state and its own mail ballots: delivery becomes conditional on advance federal approval of the envelope and on uploading voter information into a federal portal. Asking the Supreme Court to lift the block in the days before ballots go out shifts the question from whether the rule is lawful to whether it operates first and is argued about afterwards — and a rule that operates through one election has already had its effect by the time that argument is resolved.