The US Supreme Court on Monday rejected the Trump administration’s effort to impose new restrictions on mail ballots for the midterm elections, ending a surge of last-minute litigation after voting had already started.
The ruling permits states to continue using the procedures they have followed for years, through which mail ballots have accounted for nearly a third of votes cast.
The decision delivered a significant defeat for Trump, who has repeatedly argued that tighter controls are essential to protecting election integrity despite the absence of compelling evidence of widespread fraud involving mail ballots.
The justices issued a brief order without explaining their reasoning, as is customary on the court’s emergency docket. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas publicly dissented.
The Trump administration had asked the court—again the focus of intense political controversy—to authorize the restrictions before the November contests over control of Congress.
In his dissent, Alito wrote that the Postal Service has broad authority to regulate the mail and likely possesses the power to enforce Trump’s requirements.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed that the restrictions should not take effect for the midterm elections, but suggested that he might support the administration if the issue returned to the court later.
Election officials said a complete transition was not feasible in the weeks before the elections. Alabama, North Carolina and Wisconsin had already begun mailing ballots to voters while the proposed system remained inactive.
The change would have caused particular disruption in Washington and Oregon, where elections are conducted almost entirely by mail.
“Washington’s election workers are already hard at work preparing to carry out a safe, secure, and accurate election,” Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs said in a written statement. “Now, that work continues without having to upend our election processes to meet unrealistic ballot mail requirements.”
In Colorado, where voters also cast nearly all their ballots by mail, Secretary of State Jena Griswold hailed the ruling as “a major victory for Colorado and American democracy. Mail ballots have been protected for Colorado voters.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The administration’s plan would have required states to use a standard ballot envelope and upload rosters of eligible voters to a federal online portal. The Postal Service could have refused to deliver ballots from noncompliant states.
A whistleblower report warned that the requirements could prevent millions of mail ballots from being sent because the portal had not been properly developed and a single barcode error could cause an entire batch to be discarded.
Democratic state officials and voting-rights groups challenged the plan in court, arguing that the president lacks the constitutional authority to impose election rules that would “virtually eliminate mail voting on the eve of a major election.”
Lower courts agreed and blocked the plan, including through a preliminary injunction issued by a judge appointed by Trump.
The administration then appealed to the Supreme Court, contending that federal control of the Postal Service allows it to regulate the handling of mail ballots and that states could comply with the new rules.
The court granted the administration an early procedural victory, but the justices did not rule on the plan’s legality.
Trump has long opposed mail voting and falsely blamed it for his 2020 defeat to Democrat Joe Biden, even though he frequently has used mail ballots himself, most recently this year.
