This article was originally published by The Village
By Candace King, PhD
With less than 70 days until midterms, the Supreme Court and federal courts are clearing the way for the Trump administration to intensify their last ditch efforts to control elections.
On Monday, the Supreme Court lifted an injunction blocking the Trump administration from moving forward with restrictions on mail voting. The conservative majority did not make a decision on whether or not the executive order was constitutional. Instead, they concluded the challenge, brought by 23 states and Washington, D.C., came “too soon.”
In a 23-page dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson condemned the decision for its flawed judgment, writing “When the Government’s obvious goal is to interfere with the Plaintiff States’ practices and prerogatives in a manner that the Constitution does not authorize, it is both a serious legal error and a grave misuse of our equitable emergency powers to let the Executive proceed even one step further.”
The latest Supreme Court ruling left Federal District Judge Indira Talwani, who issued the initial ruling against Trump, with her hands tied. Yesterday, the Massachusetts-based judge said she was “compelled” to vacate her injunction, while insisting that Trump’s executive order was “likely unconstitutional” and warning its implementation could unleash “chaos.” With the first wave of mail ballots scheduled to go out next week, election officials and voting rights advocates are bracing themselves for impending disruptions.
Late March, Trump issued an executive order aiming to overhaul the vote by mail process. Among other provisions, it directs the U.S. Postal service to establish “citizenship lists” of voters eligible to receive mail ballots. Critics have cautioned against these practices, flagging their potential to be inaccurate and cause complications for eligible voters at the polls. A report from AP News in May uncovered tens of thousands of voters erroneously flagged as potential noncitizens or deceased from the Department of Homeland Security’s screening of over 60 million voter registrations from mostly GOP states.
The Supreme Court’s prescription on Monday concluded that the legal challenge was preemptive and did not display any “concrete injury.” Yet for voting rights advocates, flawed screenings like these prove prevention may be better than cure.
“This has become the consistent practice of the majority on this Court – to simply refuse to see the President’s actions within the context of the overwhelming weight of evidence,” Sherrilyn Ifill, civil rights lawyer and founding director of the 14th Amendment Center for Law & Democracy at the Howard University School of Law, wrote of the ruling in a Substack post. “Once the majority puts these blinders on, they present this President’s abuses as legitimate exercises of Executive power.”
Democrats have confronted these abuses in Trump’s executive order with a string of lawsuits. With the USPS rule now finalized, they contend that the threat of voter suppression is no longer hypothetical.
After Talwani lifted the August 11 injunction, League of Women Voters of Massachusetts supplemented their complaint with a petition for emergency relief yesterday.
“Implementing the newly-finalized rule less than 70 days before the general election would dramatically impair plaintiffs’ core voter engagement work and pose a grave risk of disenfranchisement,” their statement asserts.
“We are asking the court for emergency relief to prevent this harm and to affirm the public’s confidence in the systems voters rely on to conduct our elections.”
Over 20 Democratic attorneys filed a lawsuit contesting the executive order yesterday as well.
“Across the country, states are already deep into preparations for the 2026 elections. Now, at the last moment, the federal government is attempting to meddle in those preparations and potentially threaten countless Americans’ right to vote,” New York Attorney General Letitia James, one of the attorneys who filed the suit, said in a statement. “USPS has no authority to decide who can and cannot vote by mail.”
These lawsuits came 24 hours after the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), Democratic National Committee, Democratic Governors Association, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries renewed their motion for a preliminary injunction.
The Democrats argued they are “severely harmed by the President’s unlawful attempts to upturn the electoral playing field in his own favor and against his political rivals.”
They petitioned the Court for a decision on or by September 4.
To be clear, Monday’s Supreme Court ruling does not impact or apply to The Legal Defense Fund’s case, which enforces a 2021 settlement agreement in which USPS committed to prioritizing timely delivery of election mail, including mail ballots.
In a statement to The Village, LDF responded to Monday’s ruling.
“We’re disappointed by this interim ruling by the Supreme Court in the separate but related case brought by certain states,” the Legal Defense Fund told The Village in a statement yesterday. “However, the district court’s order in our case blocking USPS from proceeding with the Rule remains in place, and we will fight to keep it that way or to secure new relief.”
With these rulings, the Courts may have incited chaos and confusion for voters at the 11th hour, but Legal Defense Fund reassures voters of their power at the ballot box.
“It is important to note that today’s ruling only addresses the timing of the state plaintiffs’ challenge,” LDF told The Village. “It does not affect any voters’ ability to cast a mail ballot.”
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