Supreme Court lets Trump’s mail ballot order advance, calls states’ challenge premature

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on August 24 that a coalition of 23 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia sued too early to block President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting mail-in voting, lifting an injunction that had paused parts of the order ahead of the November midterm elections.

The order, which Trump signed on March 31, directs the Department of Homeland Security to compile state-specific lists of citizens and share them with states, instructs the attorney general to prioritize investigating officials who issue ballots to people the lists identify as ineligible, and directs the U.S. Postal Service to write rules for mail-in ballots covering envelope requirements, tracking barcodes and state-specific voter lists, according to Fox News.

The unsigned majority opinion did not decide whether the order is constitutional. It found only that the states had sued before their alleged harms were “concrete,” and it stated that “the court’s disposition of this application does not mean that any measure taken by the government to implement the order will necessarily be lawful,” Votebeat reported.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson filed a solo 23-page dissent, writing that the ruling “violates well-established precedents concerning this Court’s equitable discretion and needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections.” She wrote that it “lets another shoe drop in the Kafkaesque nightmare that our precedents have been steadily creating for certain plaintiffs who seek to bring election-related challenges,” according to Fox News.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor filed a separate dissent joined by Justice Elena Kagan.

The injunction the Court lifted was issued by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani of Massachusetts in a suit brought by California and 22 other states plus the District of Columbia. The case reached the Supreme Court on appeal from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and was docketed as Trump v. California, No. 26A124.

The 23-state coalition includes Arizona, California, Michigan, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. In their filings, the states warned that “the consequences of allowing such transformative changes to take effect so close to this fall’s elections would be extreme” and could disenfranchise voters, according to Votebeat.

A second injunction, covering the Postal Service’s mail-ballot rules nationwide, remains in place. The Postal Service has issued final rules for mail ballots but said it will not enforce them until the Supreme Court also clears that second injunction, according to PBS NewsHour. The Trump administration has separately asked the Court to lift that remaining hold.

Talwani has not yet ruled on whether the order can take effect for future elections, and states and voting rights groups are expected to challenge the Postal Service’s final rules in court quickly, Votebeat reported. A separate, consolidated case brought by nonprofits and Democratic committees is pending in federal court in Washington, D.C. Election law professor Rick Hasen predicted the trial court would move to block the Postal Service rules again, telling Votebeat “that too may end up at the Supreme Court within a week.”

PBS NewsHour reported that ballots for military and overseas voters covered by federal law are due to begin going out by September 4, eleven days after the ruling. The November 3 general election is 70 days away.