Supreme Court Blocks Trump's Mail Ballot Rule, President Calls His Own Justices 'Shells'

The Supreme Court on Tuesday, September 15, left in place a lower court injunction blocking the U.S. Postal Service from enforcing new mail-ballot rules before the November midterms. The order was brief and unsigned, stating the government "is unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge" to the injunction, according to Government Executive.

Only Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented. Trump's three first-term appointees, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh, did not join them. Gorsuch and Barrett signed the majority order. Kavanaugh wrote separately, saying "there is at least a fair prospect that the final rule falls within the Postal Service's statutory authority," but that applying it to this year's elections would be "arbitrary and capricious" under federal law because "state and local election officials do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before the elections," per Government Executive.

Trump signed the executive order behind the rule in March. USPS published the final version in August. It would have required states sending mail or absentee ballots to submit voter lists to a Federal Mail Ballot Portal and follow new barcode and envelope-formatting standards, with noncompliant ballots subject to rejection. Alabama, North Carolina and Wisconsin had already started mailing ballots under the old system before the rule was set to take effect, according to WHYY.

The dissent's argument

Alito, joined by Thomas, argued the USPS rule was simply an exercise of the Postal Service's "broad authority to regulate the mail," not a novel attempt to control elections, according to Democracy Docket. He wrote that challengers hadn't shown the rule was "ultra vires," or entirely outside the Postal Service's statutory power. Alito and Thomas also argued the rule would have "increased the visibility of ballots in transit" and helped "better detect election fraud," per Government Executive.

Proponents of stricter mail-ballot handling argue that uniform envelope standards and voter-list verification make elections more auditable, not less. Critics of mail voting have raised that point for years.

A separate federal judge in Washington, D.C. reached a different conclusion in a related case brought by Democratic groups, ruling Sunday that the rule was likely "ultra vires" and exceeded "any conception of the outer bounds" of USPS's statutory authority, according to Democracy Docket. WHYY reported there is "virtually no evidence of fraud with mail ballots" in the current record, meaning no verified evidence of the fraud Alito and Thomas cited was presented in these sources. The dispute now sits on two tracks: whether USPS has the power to do this at all, and whether it can be done on this timeline.

Trump's response

Trump posted a 463-word statement on Truth Social Wednesday calling the ruling part of a pattern of the Court being "bullied and cajoled by the Radical Left." He wrote that his own appointees "are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court, they are merely a shell of their original selves," and said the Court was "costing the United States Trillions of Dollars with shockingly bad rulings," according to CNN. Ynet reported Trump separately praised Alito and Thomas as "legends" for siding with him.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the administration would comply with the order but signaled the fight isn't over. "President Trump's efforts to make sure that we have free and fair elections are not going to stop just in November or after or thereafter," Blanche said, adding he expects "that work continue" before 2028, per CNN. Blanche also defended Trump's criticism of the justices, saying "he has every right" to voice it.

Democratic election officials welcomed the outcome. Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs said the ruling means the state can run "a safe, secure, and accurate election" without upending existing procedures, and Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said it's "crucial" not to treat access and security as mutually exclusive, according to WHYY.

A pattern beyond mail voting

This isn't an isolated split. Reason's Damon Root noted that on three issues Trump has repeatedly emphasized, tariffs, birthright citizenship, and mail voting, at least one Trump appointee has ruled against him every time, while Alito and Thomas have consistently sided with him. Root's read isn't that Alito and Thomas are personally loyal to Trump, but that they hold a broader, longstanding view favoring expansive executive power regardless of who occupies the office. That's a meaningful distinction from the partisan-loyalty framing Trump himself uses.

Mail ballots account for roughly a third of votes cast nationally, according to WHYY. Whether USPS can revisit ballot-handling rules with more lead time before 2028, and whether Congress or the courts ultimately settle who controls that authority, remains an open question the D.C. district court's ultra vires ruling has yet to resolve on the merits.