The Supreme Court Mail-In Voting Order
The Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for the Trump administration to start carrying out an executive order that restricts mail-in voting ahead of the November midterms.
In an unsigned opinion in Trump v. California, the Court paused an injunction from a federal judge in Boston that had blocked the order in 23 states and Washington, D.C. The majority said the states sued too early. Because the order itself had not yet been put into effect, the Court said the states had not been injured in a way that lets the lawsuit go forward.
The March executive order tells the Department of Homeland Security to compile lists of adult U.S. citizens in each state, tells the attorney general to prioritize prosecuting officials who issue federal ballots to ineligible voters, and tells the Postal Service to set rules for which mail ballots it will handle.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. Jackson wrote that the majority had missed “the Government’s actual objective: to secure our imprimatur for its effort to foment chaos ahead of the November elections.” Sotomayor stressed that today’s ruling does not decide whether the president actually has the power to do this.
A separate nationwide injunction, from the same Boston judge in a case brought by voting-rights groups, still bars the U.S. Postal Service from putting its new mail-ballot rule into effect. That order was not lifted on Monday.
The Court said that if the Postal Service’s final rule harms the states, they can challenge the rule itself. Mail-in and absentee voting in some states is expected to start within about a month.
Sources: SCOTUSblog; Supreme Court opinion in Trump v. California, 26A124.