Trump Administration Returns to Supreme Court Over Mail-In Ballot Rules
The Trump administration filed an emergency request with the US Supreme Court on September 6, 2026, asking the justices to let the US Postal Service track mail-in ballots and decide whether some can be rejected. The filing came two days after a federal district judge blocked enforcement of the president's executive order on mail-in voting (Al Jazeera; Associated Press; NBC News).
The case, USPS v. State of California (Application No. 26A305), is the third time the administration has asked the Supreme Court to step in over this mail-in voting plan. The Court had recently allowed the plan to move forward without ruling on whether it is actually legal (Al Jazeera; Supreme Court docket).
The trigger was a September 4 ruling from US District Judge Indira Talwani, who stopped the Postal Service from carrying out Trump's executive order on mail-in ballots. A "stay" is a temporary court order that pauses a lower court's ruling while an appeal moves forward. Talwani wrote that the executive order's directives, which give the federal government power over handling mail-in ballots, are likely unconstitutional. She warned that putting the order into effect with two months until election day "threatens disenfranchisement of millions of United States citizens who seek to vote by mail" (Al Jazeera).
In its emergency application, the administration described the Postal Service's final rule as imposing only "modest envelope-design and addressee-information requirements" for federal-election ballots. US Solicitor General John Sauer, the government's top lawyer before the Supreme Court, argued that Trump's order would not take over states' right to run elections but would impose only "reasonable preparation requirements." Those include uploading recipient name, address, and barcode information to an online portal (Al Jazeera).
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson set a Wednesday deadline for responses to the administration's request, starting what will likely be a fast-tracked briefing timeline given how close the November 2026 midterms are (Al Jazeera).
The procedural background is layered. On August 24, 2026, the Supreme Court issued an order in Trump v. California (Application No. 26A124) that set July 29, 2026 as the date for the final rule regulating mail-in ballots to take effect, regardless of states' late-August timeline for implementing it (Supreme Court opinion). A separate docket filing in case 26A297, dated September 3, 2026, on the USPS Final Rule Stay, states that for the November 2026 election the order partially nullifies the Postal Service's efforts (Supreme Court docket). SCOTUSblog covered the administration's filing under its emergency appeals docket (SCOTUSblog).
The stakes extend beyond this single lawsuit. An analysis by the States United Democracy Center found that one in four registered Democrats and one in five registered Republicans voted by mail in the 2024 US presidential election, showing that absentee voting crosses party lines (Al Jazeera; States United Democracy Center).
The broader legal landscape around mail-in voting has been shifting across multiple court terms. In Watson v. Republican National Committee (No. 24-1260, decided June 29, 2026), the petitioner argued that mail-in voting differs from in-person voting because the voter has surrendered control over the ballot. The court of appeals disagreed, explaining that voters are able to control their ballots. Plaintiffs in that case did not challenge the general practice of absentee voting or the use of the Postal Service or common carriers to transmit ballots (Supreme Court opinion; DOJ OSG brief). The Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division has separately notified the Court that a previously filed brief no longer represents the position of the United States in the voting rights context (DOJ Civil Rights Division).
The administration's legal team on the current filing includes Solicitor General John Sauer as counsel of record, with Harmeet K. Dhillon as Assistant Attorney General, Hashim M. Moopan as Deputy Solicitor General, and Jesus A. Osete as Deputy Solicitor General (DOJ filing).
The central tension in this litigation is structural. The administration frames the USPS rule as a narrow operational measure: envelope standards, barcode data, and an online portal for recipient information. The district court and the plaintiff states read the same directives as a federal power grab over a domain the Constitution largely delegates to state legislatures. Think of it as a question of who gets to set the rules for mail-in voting: the federal government, through the Postal Service, or individual states, which the Constitution says should administer elections. Judge Talwani's finding that the order is likely unconstitutional turns on that division of authority, not on the merits of envelope design.
What the Supreme Court does next will unfold under severe time pressure. With the November midterms roughly two months away, any ruling that permits or blocks the USPS rule will have immediate operational consequences for election officials preparing ballot envelopes, voter databases, and mail-tracking systems. The Court's earlier decision to allow the plan to proceed without reaching its legality left that core question unresolved. This third application forces the issue, at least partially, into a forum that may no longer be able to defer it.
The broader context here concerns the scope of any stay the Court might grant. The administration is asking for temporary permission to track and potentially reject mail-in ballots, pending resolution of the underlying merits. If the Court grants even a partial stay, election officials in affected states would need to reconfigure their ballot-processing procedures within weeks of Election Day. If the Court declines, the district court's injunction remains in force and the USPS rule stays blocked. Either outcome will be litigated further, but the clock makes a definitive resolution before November increasingly unlikely.
