Supreme Court Lets Trump Pursue Mail-Voting Limits; Separate Court Order Still Blocks Postal Service
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The Facts
- The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Monday to let the Trump administration proceed with parts of a March executive order restricting mail-in voting.
- The majority did not rule on the executive order's legality, saying the states that sued had challenged it too early.
- Trump's March executive order directs the Department of Homeland Security to compile state-by-state lists of citizens eligible to vote in federal elections.
- The executive order also directs the U.S. Postal Service to withhold mail ballots from voters who do not appear on those citizenship lists.
- A separate injunction from U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston still blocks the Postal Service from implementing the order.
- Talwani ruled Tuesday that the Postal Service violated her order by issuing a final rule tightening mail-in voting requirements.
- Twenty-three Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia sued to block the executive order.
- Nearly one in three U.S. voters used mail ballots in the most recent midterm and general elections.
- Election officials in Colorado and Thurston County, Washington, told voters that local mail-voting procedures are unchanged for November.
Context
Does the Supreme Court ruling change how people vote in November?
Not by itself. The Postal Service remains blocked nationwide by a separate injunction from Judge Talwani, and state officials and experts said it is unclear whether any new rules could be in place by the November elections lite.cnn.com,NYT,NYT. Officials in Colorado and Thurston County, Washington, said their mail-voting procedures are unchanged CBS News, Olympian.
What exactly did the Supreme Court decide?
In an unsigned emergency order, the majority lifted one lower-court injunction and said the states that sued did not have the legal right to challenge the order at this stage, because it had not been finalized. The justices explicitly did not decide whether the executive order is constitutional CBC News,Hill,Fox News.
What happens next in the litigation?
Multiple challenges remain active in lower courts, and legal analysts expect the dispute to return to the Supreme Court Reuters,Washington Post,Aol. California Gov. Gavin Newsom said he will file a new lawsuit against the administration over the mail-ballot restrictions Fox News,NY Post.
Where Left and Right agree, and where they split
- Where Left and Right agree
- The Court settled nothing on legality, and Talwani's injunction still binds the Postal Service — which both reads treat as an order that should have been honored regardless.
- Where Left and Right split
- The left and the right split on who must prove what before a mail ballot goes out.
- Why they won’t converge
- This is a values fight over which default the law should carry — a presumption that a registered voter gets a ballot unless disproven, or a presumption that eligibility must be affirmatively verified first — and no shared set of facts about the order settles which burden is correct.
How left and right read it
The presumption should run toward the voter: nobody should have to appear on a federally compiled list before the mail carrier will bring them a ballot. Yet that is precisely what the March order directs, telling Homeland Security to build state-by-state citizenship lists and the Postal Service to withhold ballots from anyone missing from them, in a country where nearly one in three voters votes by mail. Because the Supreme Court declined to rule on the order's legality, the Boston injunction still blocking implementation is the thing worth defending.
“Mr. Trump has long falsely claimed that mail-in balloting leads to fraud, and he blames a pandemic-era increase in the practice in 2020 with his loss in that year's presidential election.” — The New York Times
Confirming that ballots go only to eligible citizens is a baseline of self-government, so the directive to Homeland Security to compile citizenship lists deserves judgment on the merits, not a preemptive block — and the Court, declining to rule on legality, said the states challenged it too early. The same discipline binds the Postal Service, which was under Talwani's injunction and should have honored it. Who must prove what here?
“The California governor said in a statement late Monday he will launch another lawsuit against the federal government to try to block what he claimed were "Orwellian rules."” — New York Post
Every voting rule assigns a burden of proof. The fight here is over whether the voter carries it or the government does.
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