The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to pause a lower court blockade on President Trump’s mail-in voting executive order on Monday. The vote was 6-3, with Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting.
In its per curiam ruling, the high court granted the Trump administration’s emergency application to stay a June ruling by Massachusetts-based District Judge Indira Talwani. The Obama appointee and past Democrat donor issued an injunction barring the order from taking effect ahead of the 2026 midterms in the states that challenged the directive.
As described by Fox News, the president’s executive order “directs the Department of Homeland Security to compile a list of all adult U.S. citizens living in each state and would direct [the U.S. Postal Service] to deliver mail ballots only to individuals appearing on the lists.”
The administration appealed Talwani’s injunction to the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals but was rejected. The government did, however, score a win in a separate challenge to the order in a case before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. The D.C.-based court ruled late last month that challengers’ lawsuit was unreviewable at that time because the named agencies hadn’t implemented their official rules as required by the president’s order.
The Postal Service published a rule mandating that states “provide lists of voters who received mail-in ballots” on Friday, according to Fox.
In its Monday ruling, the Supreme Court found that the Trump administration is likely to succeed on the merits of its arguments that Talwani lacked jurisdiction to issue a judgment on the matter. It also ruled that the government is likely to succeed on the merits of its claims that Talwani’s injunction “is causing it irreparable harm, and that the equities do not favor leaving the injunction in place while the [its] appeal is pending.”
The majority went on to note that its ruling on the administration’s application “does not mean that any measure taken by the Government to implement the Order will necessarily be lawful.” While “time will tell” on that point, the justices affirmed that “the Order itself does not harm the States, so the District Court lacked jurisdiction to bar the Government from trying to implement it.”
“[F]or the reasons discussed, th[e] injunction is likely to irreparably harm the Government if it remains in place while the appellate process runs its course,” the court ruled. “Accordingly, the application for stay presented to JUSTICE JACKSON in No. 26A124 and by her referred to the Court is granted.”
Writing behalf of herself and Kagan, Sotomayor argued that the challenges brought by the states “are justiciable now,” and that a “commonsense reading of the Executive Order, corroborated by the Government’s own representations, makes clear that the respondent States face a sufficiently concrete and imminent injury to satisfy Article III.”
“Because I believe the structure of the Executive Order, the Government’s representations, and the equities counsel against emergency relief requiring the States to wait to bring their serious challenges to the Executive Order, I respectfully dissent,” Sotomayor wrote.
Meanwhile, Jackson penned a solo dissent longer than the per curiam opinion and Sotomayor’s dissent combined. Across 23 pages, the junior justice contended that the Supreme Court’s granting of relief “violates well-established precedents concerning this Court’s equitable discretion and needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections.”
“I respectfully dissent. States administering elections and the voting public that relies on them to do so deserve clarity, not caginess or confusion,” Jackson wrote. “The Court does a disservice to all concerned by distorting Article III standing and ripeness principles to issue a ruling that contributes to pre-election chaos instead of quashing it, and by using its equitable authority to facilitate a patently inequitable result.”
According to Monday’s ruling, Talwani’s order is “stayed pending the disposition of the appeal in the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and disposition of a petition for a writ of certiorari in this Court, if such a writ is timely sought.” The Supreme Court’s stay will terminate if a potential petition from the administration to SCOTUS is denied by the high court or if SCOTUS agrees to consider the matter and issue a verdict on the merits in the case.
