Trump’s Mail Rule Lost at Court, But USPS Power Remains Unresolved

On September 14, the Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration’s request to lift a lower-court injunction blocking the U.S. Postal Service’s mail-ballot plan. The injunction remains in place until after November 3, and the unsigned, one-paragraph order did not decide whether the rule itself is lawful.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that there was “at least a fair prospect” the final rule fell within the Postal Service’s statutory authority. He also wrote that applying it in the 2026 elections would be arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act because state and local election officials lacked enough time to implement it reasonably.

The plan, as described by the reports, would have required states to send USPS lists of eligible voters’ names and addresses. It also would have imposed technical requirements involving ballot-envelope barcodes and envelopes, and Wired reported that USPS could refuse to deliver ballots that did not comply with the list or those requirements.

Trump initiated the effort through a March executive order titled “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections.” NPR reported that Trump said the effort was intended to stop illegal voting by non-U.S. citizens, while administration lawyers provided courts with no evidence of mail-voting fraud in this litigation.

The timing was central to the Court’s intervention. NPR reported that voting by mail had already begun in Alabama, North Carolina and Wisconsin, with Hawaii, Oregon, Washington and other states expected to follow. Republican state election officials, including officials from Utah, warned that implementing the plan then would “almost certainly lead to mistakes, delays, and confusion” for voters and election administrators.

The decision was 7-2, with Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissenting. Alito argued that the Postal Service has broad authority to regulate the mail and that the government had made a strong showing on appeal. Kavanaugh’s view that the rule might be lawful, alongside the dissent’s broader account of USPS authority, leaves that legal question contested rather than settled.

An earlier Supreme Court proceeding allowed the rules to proceed temporarily because the challenging states lacked standing before implementation, according to Wired. The latest ruling allows states to continue using existing mail-ballot procedures for the 2026 midterms, but because it did not decide the rule’s legality, it did not permanently bar the executive branch or USPS from pursuing a similar rule in a future election. That means the Court provided immediate protection from this implementation attempt, not a permanent resolution of federal power over ballot-delivery logistics.