The Supreme Court late on Sept. 14 declined to lift a nationwide injunction blocking a United States Postal Service (USPS) rule on federal ballot mail, leaving it on hold for the 2026 midterms.
The ruling in USPS v. California took the form of an unsigned order.
“The Government is unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge to the District Court’s preliminary injunction,” the order said. “And the equitable factors applicable for obtaining emergency relief from this Court do not favor a stay.”
The Trump administration had filed an emergency application on Sept. 6, asking the justices to pause an injunction issued on Sept. 4 by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani of Massachusetts. Her ruling extended a temporary restraining order she granted on Aug. 27.
The injunction blocked the mandatory parts of the Postal Service’s final rule published on Aug. 26 that implements Section 3 of President Donald Trump’s executive order 14399. That provision would assign federal agencies a larger role in who receives a mailed ballot and how those ballots are processed by the USPS, reported Matthew Vadum writing for the Epoch Times.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh filed a concurring opinion. Justice Samuel Alito filed a dissenting opinion, which was joined by Justice Clarence Thomas.
Judge Talwani had said the postal rule could disenfranchise voters, was probably unlawful, and likely violated the U.S. Constitution, which gives states authority to run federal elections taking place within their borders. The judge previously said the postal agency presented no evidence of fraudulent mail-in voting that would justify the new Postal Service rule.
The judge held at the time that the USPS lacked authority to enforce the rule, and that, as election officials have said, given existing time constraints, complying with the rule for the midterms was “likely impossible.”
Talwani said Congress never agreed to delegate its powers under the Constitution’s elections clause to the USPS, so the rule “clashes with Congress’s statutory scheme, and is unconstitutional where it intrudes not only on ... [those] powers but also that power left to the States.”
Mr. Vadum further reported the judge added that even a small glitch in the new system would be problematic and could mean that ballots never go out, that eligible voters would almost certainly lose the chance to vote by mail, and that the disenfranchisement of plaintiff groups, such as the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts, was “practically inevitable.”
In his concurrence, Kavanaugh said there is “at least a fair prospect” that the USPS rule is legal, but it is too late to use it for the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
Justice Alito, with whom Justice Thomas joins, dissented from the denial of application for stay. “The Court incorrectly denies the Government’s application for a stay of a universal injunction that bars implementation of a final rule concerning election ballot mail. Some of the plaintiffs lack standing, while the remainder are pursuing a claim that this Court has recently called a “‘Hail Mary pass’” that “‘rarely succeeds.’” NRC v. Texas, 605 U. S. 665, 681–682 (2025). The Government has made the showings necessary for a stay, so I respectfully dissent.”
Justice Alito also correctly noted that the timing issue was a problem of the plaintiff states own making, “the plaintiff States and the courts bear a substantial share of the blame for the rule’s timing. In April, the plaintiff States sued to challenge the President’s internal directive to subordinates mandating a rulemaking. For months, this litigation cast a cloud over the Government’s ability to issue a final rule. The District Court entered several injunctions months later prohibiting the Government from undertaking that rulemaking. Not only was the Government subject to months of premature litigation and a series of injunctions that this Court later determined were likely issued without jurisdiction, the Government had to wait nearly another full month for this Court to issue its decision so holding. Indeed, this Court spent from late July to the end of August drafting nearly 40 pages of opinions, including two dissents, despite the Government’s public notice that it would not publish a final rule while subject to the injunctions, see 91 Fed. Reg. 44880, and its representation that it had a strong interest in issuing its rule in early to mid-August to allow time to implement it. The plaintiff States cannot claim the timing of the rule tilts the equities in their favor when they, and courts hearing their claims, are responsible for so much of the delay.”
When the Supreme Court blocked President Trump from implementing Postal Service mail-in ballot election security, it essentially gave permission for Democrats to steal the midterms by counting mail-in-voting for weeks, a process which, strangely enough, always results in a Democrat win.
