Supreme Court blocks Trump’s mail-ballot restrictions for the midterms, but leaves a future opening

The US Supreme Court refused to let the Trump administration’s new Postal Service rules govern the 2026 midterms. The unsigned order left a lower-court injunction in place and said the government was unlikely to succeed on the merits at this stage; Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented.

The rule would have required states to provide voter information through a federal system and use standardized, machine-readable envelopes with voter-specific barcodes. The Postal Service could refuse noncompliant ballot mail. Twenty-three states and voting-rights groups argued that the executive branch lacked this authority and that implementation, after some jurisdictions had begun mailing ballots, could disenfranchise voters.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh supplied the crucial qualification. He agreed the rule could not be imposed now because election officials lacked time, but wrote that there was at least a fair prospect that some requirements fall within Postal Service authority. The Court therefore resolved the immediate operational threat, not the final division of power between federal postal regulation and state election administration.

Roughly one-third of US voters use mail ballots, so the order removes a large last-minute risk to November’s election. It does not foreclose a redesigned rule issued earlier for 2028, making timing—not only constitutional authority—a central part of the outcome.