The Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for President Donald Trump to move ahead, at least temporarily, with new restrictions on mail-in voting ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
In a 6-3 decision along ideological lines, the court granted an emergency request from the Trump administration and lifted a lower-court order that had blocked key parts of Trump's March executive order in 23 states and the District of Columbia.
The decision gives the administration more room to implement the president's voting directives as the November elections approach. But the justices stressed that Monday's ruling does not settle the larger question of whether Trump's actions are legal.
“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,” the court's majority wrote. “On that score, time will tell.”
At issue is an executive order Trump signed in March directing his administration to develop a list of verified citizens eligible to vote and instructing the U.S. Postal Service to establish new standards for handling mail ballots.
The order has been challenged by Democratic officials who argue that the Constitution leaves the administration of elections primarily to the states, subject to Congress's authority, and does not give the president the power to impose the requirements.
California, Massachusetts, Nevada and Washington are leading the states' lawsuit, which includes 23 states and the District of Columbia.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani had blocked the challenged provisions while the lawsuit proceeded. The Trump administration then asked the Supreme Court to intervene, arguing that Talwani acted prematurely because the Postal Service had not yet issued its final rule.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer made that argument to the justices after the Postal Service announced its final regulation last week.
“The issuance of a final rule underscores the need for relief from the district court’s improper, unripe injunction,” Sauer wrote.
The Supreme Court's majority agreed that the states' challenge had come too soon, saying courts should generally review regulations after they become final rather than intervene while an agency is still developing them.
“Federal courts review final rules, not proposed rules—and certainly not antecedent internal directives to propose a rule,” the court wrote. “If the Postal Service’s final rule harms the States, they may challenge that rule.”
That distinction could prove important. The ruling removes one obstacle facing the administration, but it does not give the Postal Service's final regulations a clean bill of health. The states have already begun a new effort to block those rules, and the case will now return to the lower courts.
Talwani has set an expedited schedule to consider the legality of the Postal Service's newly announced policy, setting up another round of litigation as election deadlines rapidly approach.
The three liberal justices dissented from Monday's decision. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Elena Kagan, emphasized that the court had not ruled that Trump possesses the authority he claims.
“Today’s decision does not address whether the President’s attempts to interfere with States’ administration of the November 2026 elections are lawful,” Sotomayor wrote. “Nor does it suggest that the Executive Branch has any constitutional or statutory authority to implement the President’s directives.”
“Instead, today’s decision merely postpones adjudication of those challenges.”
The states had urged the Supreme Court to leave Talwani's injunction in place, warning that waiting until the Postal Service's rules were finalized could leave too little time to resolve the dispute before November.
They also argued that mistakes in determining voter eligibility could have serious consequences for people who depend on voting by mail.
“Because of the high risk of errors and the limited window for correcting mistakes, many of the millions of voters who rely on mail voting—especially voters with disabilities and those in rural areas—would likely be denied mail ballots and, as a result, disenfranchised,” the states wrote. “Many more voters would be confused.”
Trump has targeted mail-in voting for years, repeatedly claiming it enables widespread election fraud. States have documented isolated cases of fraudulent voting and ballots cast by ineligible voters, but not on the massive scale Trump has alleged. Trump himself has also voted by mail in Florida.
Monday's ruling is another victory for the Trump administration on the Supreme Court's emergency docket, which allows the justices to act quickly in time-sensitive disputes, often without full briefing or oral arguments.
Still, the legal fight is far from finished.
The immediate effect of the ruling is to allow Trump's administration to move closer to implementing its mail-ballot policies before the midterms. Whether those policies ultimately survive judicial review — and whether there is enough time to put them fully into effect before voters begin casting ballots — will now be decided in the next stage of the court battle.
