Supreme Court leaves Postal Service mail-ballot rules blocked for November

The Supreme Court on Monday refused to let the U.S. Postal Service carry out parts of a new mail-in voting rule while the midterm election is already under way. The unsigned order leaves standing a federal injunction from Boston. North Carolina and Alabama have already begun sending ballots. California Secretary of State Shirley Weber said offices could “finally move forward” without “a dark cloud hanging over us.”

Justice Brett Kavanaugh concurred in a paragraph. He suggested the Postal Service might have the power to issue such a rule, then said election officials “do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before” November. Justice Samuel Alito dissented, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas. The administration had asked the court to stay the injunction so the Postal Service could take a larger role in who receives a mail ballot.

The fight sits on top of a separate June decision. In that 5–4 case the court held that states may count ballots postmarked by Election Day and received later. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the three liberal justices. Thomas, Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Kavanaugh dissented. President Donald Trump called that ruling a “tremendous loss.” Monday’s order is narrower: it is about a Postal Service regulation, not about grace periods, and it is about this November rather than the statute book.

An election already in the mail

Trump signed an executive order in March directing agencies to tighten mail voting. Lower courts blocked the Postal Service pieces. The administration tried the emergency docket. Three justices showed some willingness to let parts of the plan run in this cycle or a later one. Five votes did not appear.

AP described the result as a win for the status quo. Thousands of local offices can send the ballots they had already designed. Voters who expected a form in the ordinary window will get it. The administration can still argue the merits in the lower courts after November. It cannot use the Postal Service as a new gate this autumn.

Trump later criticised the court for rejecting his push and said the justices were “not the people I interviewed.” The legal holding is shorter than the politics around it. For the midterms, mail ballots move as they did before the executive order, under the June grace-period ruling and under a Postal Service that has been told not to apply the blocked sections while people are already voting.