Supreme Court blocks Postal Service mail-ballot rule before the midterms

The US Supreme Court on 14 September refused to let the Postal Service apply parts of a new mail-in voting rule before the November midterms, leaving in place a Boston federal judge's order that blocks those provisions.

The unsigned order gave no extended reasoning, which is standard on the emergency docket. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a one-paragraph concurrence. He said the Postal Service might have the power to issue the rule, but that election officials do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before November. Justice Samuel Alito dissented, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas. Alito wrote that the Postal Service has broad authority to regulate the mail and likely can enforce the restrictions.

At least two states, North Carolina and Alabama, had already started sending ballots by mail. The Associated Press reported that mail ballots have accounted for nearly a third of votes cast in recent cycles. The decision keeps the processes those states already use.

The blocked rule grew out of a March executive order in which President Donald Trump directed federal agencies to tighten mail voting. The administration asked the justices to clear the way for the Postal Service provisions after a district judge in Boston stopped them. PBS noted that the majority did not publish a full opinion on the legality of the plan. Kavanaugh left the door open to a later case after the midterms.

This order is separate from the court's 29 June decision in the Mississippi grace-period case. In that 5-4 ruling, written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the three liberal justices, the court held that federal law does not stop states from counting mail ballots postmarked by Election Day and received days later. About 30 states run some form of grace period. Trump called that June result a tremendous loss.

The September order is narrower and more immediate. It does not decide whether the Postal Service can rewrite mail-ballot handling. It decides that it cannot do so with weeks left before a midterm in which several states have already printed and mailed envelopes. Alito's dissent treats that timing argument as secondary to agency power. Kavanaugh treats timing as enough to deny relief now.

The March executive order had asked several agencies, not only the Postal Service, to change how mail ballots are handled. The Boston injunction and Monday's denial deal with the postal slice. Other pieces of the order are in other courts. The midterm calendar is what compressed this slice onto the emergency docket. Once a state has printed ballots and started to mail them, a new postal rule collides with paper already in the system.

Trump has long argued that late counting of mail ballots invites fraud. Federal and state audits have not produced evidence that mail ballots are a large source of illegal votes. He has also voted by mail himself. The legal fight is therefore about control of process in a midterm that will decide the House and could decide the Senate, not about a newly documented wave of postal fraud.

Kavanaugh's concurrence is the sentence clerks will quote. He did not join Alito in saying the rule should take effect now. He also did not say the Postal Service lacks power. He said there is not enough time. That leaves the administration free to bring a cleaner case after this Congress is seated.

Election officials in states that rely on mail now have a short, usable answer. The envelopes they have already printed remain valid under the rules they used last cycle. Any broader rewrite of postal handling waits for a case that is not being rushed through September. That is the concrete result of Monday's order. The larger argument over agency power and grace periods will return after the votes are counted.