Supreme Court Keeps Block on USPS Mail-Voting Rule for November Election
The Supreme Court on Sept. 14, 2026, denied the application for stay in Postal Service v. California, No. 26A305. The decision leaves a block on parts of a U.S. Postal Service mail-in voting rule in place for the November 2026 election.
The order was brief and unsigned, according to contemporary court coverage. The stay application, a request to let the rule take effect while lawsuits continue, had been presented to Justice Jackson. She referred it to the full Court Supreme Court. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a one-paragraph concurrence, a short separate statement agreeing with the result, agreeing with the denial of the government's request to carry out parts of the rule SCOTUSblog.
In that concurrence, Kavanaugh said that applying the Postal Service rule in the 2026 midterm elections "would be arbitrary and capricious" CNBC. The phrase is a legal test for government action without a sound reason. His sentence is the only stated reasoning from any justice attached to the denial.
The rule traces to executive action. President Donald J. Trump issued Executive Order No. 14399, and the executive order underlying the USPS absentee and mail-in voting rules was issued in March Ballotpedia. The administration then pursued both the order and a Postal Service implementation rule through emergency applications for stays.
The blocked Postal Service order would have allowed USPS to refuse ballot delivery if states withheld eligible voter lists Reuters. That provision put election administrators and the Postal Service on opposite sides of list-sharing, with delivery itself as the enforcement point.
District order and appeal
U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani, who sits in Boston, issued a preliminary injunction, a temporary block issued before a final ruling, against the executive order limiting mail voting. A federal judge later extended that legal block on the plan to regulate mail ballots during the midterm elections AP.
A separate district ruling blocked the Postal Service from restricting mail-in voting. A federal judge again blocked the executive order seeking to limit mail voting in the midterm elections in late August.
Appellate review did not disturb those orders before the Supreme Court acted. A three-judge appeals panel refused to lift Talwani's preliminary injunction blocking the mail-voting order AP. A U.S. appeals court rejected the Trump administration's bid to implement mail-in voting restrictions Reuters.
That Sept. 10 appellate denial is the controlling status for the injunction's path through the courts of appeals. An earlier July appellate ruling that the president cannot implement the mail-in voting order now functions as background to the September panel action and the Supreme Court stay denial.
Calendar and election administration
For the November 2026 election, ballot mailing will begin on Sept. 30, 2026, according to filings in the stay litigation. Under Texas law, voters have until Oct. 23, 2026, 11 days before the election, to request a mail ballot.
The broader context here is timing under election-administration deadlines. A stay would have permitted partial implementation while litigation continued. Denial preserves the district court's preliminary injunction through the period when ballots move. Kavanaugh's language points directly to that mid-cycle implementation problem, like changing the rules after the game has started.
NPR, in an article published Sept. 18, 2026 at 4:44 AM ET and credited to Danielle Kurtzleben and A Martinez for Morning Edition, reported that Trump's agenda had run into rare institutional pushback that week on issues ranging from mail-in voting to the Federal Reserve. The piece, titled "Trump's week of setbacks: The president's priorities get rare pushback," is published at https://www.npr.org/2026/09/18/nx-s1-5973062/trumps-week-of-setbacks-the-presidents-priorities-get-rare-pushback.
Looking at what this means for the docket, the distinction matters between preliminary relief and merits. No court in this sequence has issued a final judgment on the underlying executive order cited in the filings. The district court granted a preliminary injunction. The appeals court declined to lift it. The Supreme Court declined to stay it in part.
In my view, that posture leaves two tracks open for election lawyers to watch. The first is merits litigation on the executive order and the USPS rule after November. The second is any narrower stay request tied to a specific provision rather than the rule as a whole. The Court's Sept. 14 action denied the request to implement parts of the rule, not the entire underlying case.
The record is now defined. Executive Order No. 14399 issued in March. Talwani enjoined it on a preliminary basis. The courts of appeals kept the injunction in place on Sept. 10. The Supreme Court kept it in place on Sept. 14. Ballot mailing begins Sept. 30.
