Trump Admin Takes Mail-In Voting Fight to Supreme Court

President Donald Trump’s administration has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to allow enforcement of an executive order targeting mail-in voting, setting up a major election law showdown just 99 days before the November midterm elections. The Justice Department filed an emergency application on July 27, seeking to overturn lower court rulings that blocked key provisions of the order in 23 states and the District of Columbia.

The March 2026 executive order, titled “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections,” directs the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to compile “state citizenship lists” of eligible voters and instructs the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail ballots only to voters on those lists. It also requires ballots to feature secure envelopes with unique barcodes for tracking and threatens to withhold federal funding from non-compliant states, according to AP News.

Legal Challenge

A coalition of 23 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia, led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, swiftly challenged the order in federal court. They argue the Constitution gives states and Congress — not the president — the authority to set election rules. Their attorneys have warned that Trump’s proposed changes are “ripe for abuse and could cause chaos.”

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, an Obama appointee in Massachusetts, on June 25 blocked implementation of the mail-in ballot and state citizenship list provisions for the plaintiff states, declaring Sections 2 and 3 of the order legally void. A divided 2-1 panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals refused on July 25 to pause that injunction, writing that allowing the order “to take effect for the elections taking place in the fall would sow confusion and threaten disenfranchisement of many eligible voters,” as SCOTUSblog reported.

The Emergency Appeal

Solicitor General D. John Sauer filed the emergency application on Monday, asking the justices to issue an immediate administrative stay that would temporarily put the lower court order on hold while lawsuits play out. Sauer argued the district court ruling is “especially indefensible because the agencies are still deliberating over how (if at all) to implement the Order, yet the district court preemptively decided that whatever the agencies may choose to do will necessarily be unlawful.”

Sauer also stressed the urgency of the timeline, writing: “Even if the agencies’ implementation plans end up being entirely lawful, there is not enough time to obtain ordinary appellate relief from the injunction in order to carry them out before the November election.” The Supreme Court has set a deadline of August 3 for the states to file their response.

The Guardian noted that the emergency appeal comes after Trump delivered a primetime address elevating his yearslong push to raise doubts about election integrity. Speaking at a General Motors facility in Michigan on Monday, Trump said: “And hopefully there will be no mail-in ballots,” calling them “inherently corrupt.”

Contrasting Lower Court Decisions

A separate ruling from U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee in Washington, D.C., found in May that it was too early to block the order because it had not yet been implemented. This split highlights the legal uncertainty surrounding the president’s push to reshape federal election procedures.

Meanwhile, as CNBC reported, a separate federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., recently lifted a broader injunction against the Postal Service rule, leaving open the possibility that the Postal Service could implement restrictions in states not covered by the 23-state lawsuit.

A coalition of nonpartisan voting rights groups — including the League of Women Voters, ACLU, and Brennan Center — has filed a separate challenge in the case LWVMA v. Trump. On July 22, a federal judge found that disenfranchisement is “plausibly likely and imminent” and scheduled a preliminary injunction hearing for August 7. The ACLU released a joint statement from the voting rights groups applauding the district court ruling, declaring the executive order “unconstitutional and dangerous.”

The Stakes

Mail-in voting has become increasingly popular with voters of both parties, with approximately 30% of all ballots cast by mail during the 2024 presidential election. A 2025 Brookings Institution study found only about four cases of fraud out of every 10 million mail ballots cast — making the administration’s stated concern about noncitizen voting difficult to substantiate. Noncitizen voting is already a felony punishable by deportation and has been repeatedly shown to be rare.

As Salon noted, the legal battle centers less on the legality of mail voting itself than on the fundamental constitutional question of who has the authority to regulate federal elections — states or the executive branch. The 1st Circuit majority described the order as imposing “unprecedented levels of involvement by federal officials in how states administer elections.”

The Supreme Court has already ruled against the Trump administration on mail-in ballots once before, finding in June 2026 that states can count ballots that arrive after Election Day.

What’s Next

The Supreme Court has ordered the 23 plaintiff states to file their response by 4 p.m. EDT on August 3. Following that, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson — who handles emergency applications from the 1st Circuit — could rule on the stay request herself or refer it to the full court. A decision is expected within days or weeks.

If the Supreme Court allows the order to take effect, it could trigger widespread changes to mail voting in more than half the country months before the election, potentially disenfranchising voters not on federal lists — including overseas military personnel, elderly voters, students, and newly naturalized citizens. If the Court denies the request, state election laws will remain in place for November, and the broader legal challenge over presidential authority will continue.

Either way, the case could redefine the balance of power between the executive branch and states over election administration, with implications extending well beyond the 2026 midterms to the 2028 presidential election.