The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to clear the way for the U.S. Postal Service to implement new requirements for mail-in ballots, escalating a legal fight over election procedures with the midterms roughly two months away.
The Justice Department filed an emergency application Thursday challenging a federal judge’s temporary block on the Postal Service’s plan for carrying out President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting mail voting.
“The district court’s continued prejudgment of the rule is baseless,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in the application.
The Supreme Court previously lifted a block on Trump’s executive order itself, concluding last month that the states challenging the directive likely lacked standing. The latest dispute centers instead on the Postal Service’s recently finalized rules for implementing the president’s order.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, an Obama appointee who sits on the federal bench in Boston, temporarily blocked a key part of the Postal Service rule while she considers whether to issue longer-lasting preliminary relief.
Talwani held a hearing Thursday on the challengers’ request to block the plan but has not yet issued a ruling.
The administration argues there is little time to spare. Sauer told the Supreme Court that North Carolina intends to begin mailing ballots Friday, while Alabama is expected to begin next week.
Under the Postal Service plan, states would have to comply with certain design requirements for mail-in ballot envelopes, including unique barcodes and an official logo. Election officials would also be required to provide the Postal Service with lists identifying voters eligible to cast ballots by mail.
If a ballot fails to meet the specifications or the voter does not appear on the submitted list, the Postal Service would refuse to deliver it.
Democratic-led states and private groups have challenged the rule, arguing that it improperly interferes with states’ authority to administer elections and exceeds the Postal Service’s authority.
The administration disputes the characterization that the policy amounts to a federal takeover of mail voting.
“Contrary to the claims of the district court and respondents that the Postal Service is trying to federalize the rules for mail-in voting, the Postal Service’s final rule imposes only modest envelope-design and addressee-information requirements for federal-election ballots,” Sauer wrote.
The case comes back before the Supreme Court just weeks after the justices sided with the administration in an earlier stage of the dispute. In that decision, the court said the states were unlikely to have standing to challenge Trump’s executive order.
Talwani’s latest order takes a different approach, focusing on the Postal Service’s final rule rather than the executive order that directed the agency to act.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which represents some of the challengers, argues the administration is attempting to force through sweeping changes immediately before an election.
“USPS’s mail ballot rule is an unconstitutional attempt to upend mail voting on the eve of an election,” Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, said in a statement.
“The district court temporarily blocked the rule’s key provision while it decides the request for preliminary relief through an order set to expire within days. Yet President Trump’s administration is running to the Supreme Court anyway. The only emergency here is the one the administration created. The court’s temporary order preserves the voting procedures Americans have relied on for years, and it should stand,” Lakin added.
The states and private groups challenging the Postal Service rule have until Tuesday morning to respond to the administration’s Supreme Court filing.
The dispute puts the justices in the middle of another election-related fight with voting already approaching in some states. A decision on the administration’s emergency request could determine whether the Postal Service can impose the new ballot requirements for the 2026 midterm elections while the broader legal challenge continues.
