The Supreme Court has denied the Trump administration’s emergency application to reinstate a Postal Service rule that would have affected mail-in ballots before the midterm elections.
The rule in question would have routed every mail-in ballot through a citizenship-verification portal before November, a requirement that a federal judge had already blocked.
Judge Indira Talwani’s injunction against the rule remains in full effect, meaning the Postal Service cannot enforce the citizenship-verification requirement during the upcoming midterm cycle.
The Court issued its decision in U.S. Postal Service v. California in just three sentences, an unusually brief ruling for a matter with such significant electoral consequences.
The Court stated: “The application for stay presented to Justice Jackson and by her referred to the Court is denied.”
It continued: “The Government is unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge to the District Court’s preliminary injunction.”
The Court added: “And the equitable factors applicable for obtaining emergency relief from this Court do not favor a stay.”
Notably, the majority identified two separate and independently fatal problems with the government’s position, addressing both the merits of the case and the equitable factors required for emergency relief.
This outcome stands in stark contrast to a shadow docket ruling just three weeks prior, in which the same Court granted Trump’s administration a win on a related mail-in ballot application.
In that earlier ruling, the conservative justices argued that the blue states challenging the rule had acted prematurely, before the Postal Service had formally finalised its rule.
The Postal Service subsequently completed and finalised the rule, at which point Judge Talwani reviewed it again and again found it to be unconstitutional.
The administration brought the finalised rule back to the Court expecting a different outcome, but the justices ultimately left the block in place, dealing the White House a significant legal setback.
The decision ensures that mail-in voting processes will continue without the additional citizenship-verification step for the foreseeable future during the midterm election period.
Legal observers noted that the Court’s willingness to cite both the merits and the equities as grounds for denial signals a firm rejection of the government’s position rather than a procedural sidestep.
The ruling represents one of the more high-profile electoral law defeats for the Trump administration in recent months as midterm campaigning intensifies across the country.