Supreme Court rejects Trump bid to lift block on mail-in ballots rule

The Supreme Court on Monday night rejected a request by the Trump administration to lift a judicial block on a controversial U.S. Postal Service rule that would make it more difficult to vote by mail in the upcoming midterm elections.

An unsigned ruling by a majority of the Supreme Court said the administration “is unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge to the” preliminary injunction issued by a U.S. District Court judge blocking the rule from being used in November’s elections.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, an appointee of President Donald Trump, concurred with the ruling in a statement that said, “there is at least a fair prospect that the final rule falls within the Postal Service’s statutory authority.”

“But applying the rule in the 2026 elections would be arbitrary and capricious in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act because state and local election officials do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before the elections,” Kavanaugh added. “For that reason, I concur in the denial of the application for stay.”

Two of Kavanaugh’s fellow conservatives on the nine-justice court, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, dissented from the decision to reject a stay of the injunction against the Postal Service rule.

Alito, in his written dissent, said that some of the plaintiffs who had sued to challenge the Postal Service’s rule lacked legal standing to do so, “while the remainder are pursuing a claim that this Court has recently called a ‘Hail Mary pass’ that ‘rarely succeeds.'”

The midterm elections will determine which political party controls each chamber of Congress. Trump’s fellow Republicans hold slim majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

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