The Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to implement an executive order that adds restrictions to mail-in voting.
The decision offers space for other legal challenges that could slow down the order in addition to cases that are already in process.
The SCOTUS’ right-leaning majority did not address the legality of Trump’s executive order, but said that the states that sued over the order did not have the legal right to challenge it. The ruling was an emergency order, as several states are poised to send out absentee and overseas ballots in less than a week.
The order is not final, yet could cause bedlam across the country.
“The Court’s disposition of the application does not mean that any measure taken by the Government to implement the Order will necessarily be lawful. On that score, time will tell,” the majority wrote.
The dissenting justices, namely Justice Brown Jackson, said that the ruling, “lets another shoe drop in the Kafkaesque nightmare that out precedents have been steadily creating for certain plaintiffs who seek to bring election-related challenges.”
Although the ruling opens a path for the administration to being restrictions on mail voting, it will likely lead to further litigation that could freeze the executive order again.
Democratic leaders in 23 states and the District of Columbia sued to block to the order. They said that the Constitution gives the states and Congress to power to run elections and were concerned that the executive order could engender abuse.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said that the order would make it more difficult for Americans to vote and vowed to put up a fight.
Although Trump claims that mail-in voting is rife with fraud, he voted by mail-in ballot in 2025 and the Brookings Institution has found that there were only about four cases of fraud for every 10 million mail-in ballots.
