The supreme court on Monday rejected Donald Trump’s mail ballot restrictions for now, capping a flurry of last-minute legal action with voting in the midterm elections already underway.
The decision allows states to continue sending out mail ballots under the same processes they have used for years.
The Trump administration had asked the court, once again at the center of a roiling political controversy, to clear the way for restrictions before the pivotal November contests for control of Congress. The case has major implications because nearly one-third of the country votes by mail.
“The government is unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge to the district court’s preliminary injunction,” states the one-paragraph unsigned order. “And the equitable factors applicable for obtaining emergency relief from this court do not favor a stay.”
Justice Brett Kavanaugh filed a concurrence, ruling that he believed the government had “at least a fair prospect” of success defending the plan, but that implementation so close to election day would be “arbitrary and capricious”.
Justice Samuel Alito dissented, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas. In the dissent, Alito blamed the litigating states for creating the conditions of a ruling so close to an election, and wrote that they should not benefit from a protracted process that they created with their suit.
“The plaintiff states cannot claim the timing of the rule tilts the equities in their favor when they, and courts hearing their claims, are responsible for so much of the delay,” he wrote.
Civil rights groups lauded the decision.
“It is alarming what the administration was seeking to do here,” said Kristen Clarke, NAACP general counsel and former head of the justice department’s civil rights division. “This was an 11th-hour effort by the administration to hijack the way that we vote by mail in our country.”
Civil rights groups could not have moved faster, she said. “At the earliest opportunity, civil rights organizations like the NAACP took to the court to stand up for voters. It’s important to remember that the final rule was not issued until about roughly 10 days ago. So, I find Justice Alito’s statements disingenuous … We should focus on the fact that the court is leaving in place an injunction that prevents this administration from turning our electoral system on its head. What the administration was attempting to do here would have unleashed chaos across the country.”
“The supreme court has done the right thing by protecting the American people’s right to vote,” said Robert Garcia, a Democratic representative from Long Beach, California. “Donald Trump tried to illegally interfere with our elections and undermine vote-by-mail for millions of Americans and failed. We will keep fighting to protect the right to vote of every single citizen in this country.”
The case stems from an executive order issued by Trump on 31 March requiring the post office to refrain from delivering ballots for mail-in voting to registered voters deemed ineligible when compared with Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other federal records.
Voting rights groups, joined by 23 states and the District of Columbia, sued the administration to stop the proposed rule, arguing that the US constitution provides no authority for the president to issue orders governing the administration of elections.
Election officials have said there was simply no way to carry out a complete overhaul in the weeks before the midterms. Indeed, Alabama, North Carolina and Wisconsin began sending mail ballots to voters over the past week while the new system was still not active.
The Trump administration plan would require states to adopt a uniform envelope style and submit lists of eligible voters to an online portal. The postal service could refuse to deliver ballots to states that didn’t comply.
A whistleblower report, though, said the postal system’s requirements could lead to millions of mail ballots never being sent, because the portal wasn’t properly built and a single bar code error could result in an entire batch of ballots being tossed out.
Democratic state officials and voting rights groups challenged the restrictions in court, arguing the president has no constitutional authority to set election rules that would “virtually eliminate mail voting on the eve of a major election”.
Lower courts agreed. But an initial injunction issued by US district judge Indira Talwani was overturned on procedural grounds in July, but was reinstated after the USPS posted a final rule on ballot delivery. Monday’s ruling upholds that injunction.
The Trump administration appealed to the supreme court, arguing that federal control of the postal service allows them to set rules for mail ballot handling and that compliance was possible.
The federal government won an early procedural decision at the supreme court, but the justices pointedly did not decide the legality of the plan.
Trump has long opposed mail voting and falsely blamed it for his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden, even though he often uses that method to cast his own ballot, including as recently as this year.
“The court’s ruling is a massive sigh of relief for local election officials and voters – especially for the thousands of service members abroad whose ballots are legally required to be sent by all 50 states within the next five days,” said Samantha Tarazi, co-founder and CEO of the Voting Rights Lab.
“But this isn’t over. This administration will keep testing every avenue to manipulate our elections and sow doubt in results he doesn’t like. Today is yet another example of President Trump’s extreme elections agenda losing in the courts and with the American people. The bottom line is simple: states run our elections – not the president.”
