The Supreme Court has rejected an attempt by former President Donald Trump to restrict mail-in voting, a move that could have significantly benefited Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections. In a decision handed down Monday evening in United States Postal Service v. California, the Court found that the Trump administration exceeded its authority in implementing new rules for mailed ballots.
The ruling, described as a "rout" for Trump's initiative, indicates that the former president's plan to sabotage voting by mail would not be permitted under any circumstances. No justice, including those in the dissenting opinion, argued that Trump possessed the power to implement such restrictions on voting by mail.
This decision marks the second significant Supreme Court ruling in less than a week that has thwarted efforts by the Republican Party to influence the 2026 midterm elections. Last week, the Court ruled that Missouri must use its previous congressional maps, which favored Democrats, instead of new maps designed to elect more Republicans.
These rulings come from a Court with a six-justice Republican majority, a bench that has previously made decisions perceived as beneficial to the GOP, including upholding Trump's presidential immunity for actions taken while in office. However, the recent decisions suggest that even this Court has limits on what it will tolerate.
One explanation for these outcomes, according to legal analysis, is a shift in the types of cases reaching the Supreme Court. As the Court has moved further right, savvy liberal and Democratic lawyers may be less inclined to bring cases based on legal theories unlikely to be accepted by conservative judges. Conversely, Republicans and their allies have become more aggressive in pursuing cases that might have been dismissed by a less conservative bench, or enacting laws that might be deemed unconstitutional by less sympathetic federal courts.
The Trump administration's new rules on mail-in ballots, announced in late August, imposed a range of restrictions just weeks before states needed to begin mailing ballots. These included requirements for specific envelope designs pre-approved by a federal official and the entry of voter data into an online platform that had not yet been created. The administration cited vague statutes related to the Postal Service's functions as the basis for these rules.
States that challenged the rules argued that compliance would be practically impossible. For example, California, needing to mail 23 million ballots, estimated that complying with a single new scanning requirement would take "43 years." The Court's brief order addressed the case by concluding that Trump was "unlikely to succeed on the merits" of his claim and that "equitable factors" did not favor his position. This implies that the rules are not only unworkable for the 2026 election but likely illegal for any future election due to a lack of authority from the Trump administration.
Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, wrote a dissent that supported allowing Trump's attack on mailed ballots to proceed. However, Alito's argument focused on a procedural technicality rather than the legality of the rules themselves, suggesting a willingness to overlook weaker arguments on behalf of a political ally. The majority decision, while brief, demonstrates that most justices on the Court are unwilling to allow such a direct challenge to voting by mail to stand, even with a strong Republican majority.