Trump administration asks justices to allow USPS ballot rule

The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to let the U.S. Postal Service enforce new mail-ballot rules just weeks before the Nov. 3 midterm elections, seeking to revive requirements that a federal judge blocked after states warned they could not comply in time.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer filed an emergency request asking the justices to halt a temporary restraining order issued last week by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston. The Justice Department has already appealed to the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, but that court has not yet acted. Talwani also held a hearing Thursday on a request from two dozen Democratic-led states and voting rights groups for a longer-lasting preliminary injunction.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who handles emergency matters from the 1st Circuit, directed the states to respond by Tuesday morning.

The Postal Service rule requires states and local election offices to meet ballot-envelope design standards, including the use of unique intelligent mail barcodes, and to submit information through an online portal about voters who will receive mail ballots, including names, addresses and individualized barcodes. Those voters would be enrolled with the Postal Service and placed on state-specific “Mail-In and Absentee Participation Lists.” Ballot mailings that do not meet the requirements “will not be accepted and will be returned” to election offices, the Postal Service said, according to CBS News.

Sauer argued that the rule “imposes only modest envelope-design and addressee-information requirements for federal-election ballots sent” and concerns regulation of the mail, not state election administration.

“The Rule’s regulation of the U.S. Mail—not federal elections — is plainly constitutional,” he wrote. “While the States have primary authority to regulate the manner of elections, they cannot choose to use the federal mails to carry out their elections but then insist that their election-related mail is somehow exempt from the Postal Service’s rulemaking authority, conferred by Congress, to regulate envelope design and addressee information.”

He said Talwani’s order “partially nullifies” Postal Service efforts to address the risk that mail could be used for voter fraud, which he described as “a particularly pernicious species of fraud that dilutes the votes of lawful voters, prevents election results from reflecting the will of the American people, and undermines ‘public confidence in the integrity of the electoral process.’”

Sauer also warned of a “grave risk” that states may not prepare to comply because the order makes steps voluntary rather than mandatory, potentially leaving voters unable to cast ballots by mail.

Talwani sided last week with the states and voting rights groups, finding that the rule likely intruded on states’ authority to run elections and created an “impossible” timeline. She wrote that the Postal Service was refusing to send ballots to eligible voters unless election officials submitted ballot and return-envelope designs for advance approval, created accounts for a new portal, certified approval and uploaded voter information.

“Plaintiff States face irreparable harm where they are required to comply with a likely unconstitutional regulation for which compliance is practically impossible as to the 2026 midterm elections, now little more than two months away,” Talwani wrote.

She said most states had already ordered mail ballots, some were required by state law to send them as early as next week, and North Carolina is scheduled to begin mailing absentee ballots Friday. At least two Wisconsin municipalities have already mailed ballots, CBS News reported, and more states are expected to begin later in September.

Talwani wrote that the government had not presented “any evidence regarding fraudulent absentee or mail-in voting” and said the Postal Service’s interest in addressing an “unsubstantiated problem” was outweighed by the risk of disenfranchising voters who rely on mail ballots.

The rule stems from a March 31 executive order by President Donald Trump titled “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections.” The Supreme Court previously overturned an earlier Talwani order blocking implementation, ruling 6-3 that the decision was premature because the rule had not yet been finalized. The rule was finalized late last month.