The US Supreme Court has refused to revive a Postal Service rule that would have imposed new restrictions on the handling of mail-in ballots, dealing a setback to the Trump administration’s efforts to tighten voting-by-mail procedures ahead of the November midterm elections.
In a brief order, the justices rejected the Justice Department’s request to suspend a preliminary injunction issued by US District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston. Her ruling had prevented the US Postal Service from putting the new requirements into effect while challenges brought by states and voting-rights organisations continue.
The Postal Service adopted the disputed rules following an executive order issued by President Donald Trump in March seeking greater federal oversight of mail voting.
The Supreme Court said the government was unlikely to prevail in its challenge to Talwani’s injunction. Conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas were the only members of the court to publicly dissent.
Under the proposed system, states would have been required to provide the Postal Service with lists of voters receiving mail ballots. Ballots would also have had to use Postal Service-approved envelopes carrying unique barcodes. The agency could reject mail ballots that failed to meet those requirements or were linked to voters absent from state-provided lists.
Opponents argued that the system could interfere with the delivery of large numbers of legitimate ballots, particularly with states preparing to distribute ballots ahead of the November 3 election.
The administration has defended the measure as necessary to guard against voter fraud. Critics, however, have pointed to the limited evidence of widespread fraud involving mail voting and warned that introducing the new system so close to the election could create confusion and disenfranchise voters.
Judge Talwani blocked the rule on September 4, concluding that the challengers were likely to succeed in showing that the measure exceeded constitutional limits. She also found that states had too little time to adapt their election systems before the midterms.
A second federal judge, Carl Nichols in Washington, DC, separately ruled against the restrictions on Sunday.
The legal challenge has drawn a coalition of Democratic-led states, Washington, DC and voting-rights groups. The 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals had already declined to suspend Talwani’s injunction, warning that the rule could potentially affect millions of voters while producing little benefit in the fight against voter fraud.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, while agreeing with the Supreme Court’s decision, offered a narrower view. He said there was a reasonable possibility that the Postal Service possessed authority to regulate some aspects of mail voting, but concluded that state and local election officials did not have enough time to implement the changes before the 2026 election.
Alito, in dissent, argued that the Postal Service has broad powers over the regulation of mail and criticised the legal challenges to the rule.
The Supreme Court’s latest decision is part of a broader legal fight over the Trump administration’s attempts to increase federal involvement in election administration. In August, the court had lifted an earlier injunction that had temporarily blocked parts of Trump’s executive order, including provisions related to mail voting, before the Postal Service rules were finalised.
For now, the restrictions remain blocked as the underlying legal battle continues.
