On Monday, August 24, 2026, the Supreme Court granted emergency applications from the Justice Department and a dozen Republican-led states and lifted a permanent injunction that had blocked Trump's March 2026 mail-voting executive order in the 23 states and the District of Columbia that sued. The vote was 6-3, and the decision was unsigned.
What the order requires: states must design new mail-ballot envelopes carrying mandatory barcodes tying each ballot to a voter, submit those envelope designs to the Postal Service for approval, and use them for the November elections.
The majority did not decide whether the order is lawful. It ruled on standing and timing, reasoning that the true “source of any injury” to the states would be “the downstream action that the Secretary might take in the future,” and that predictions about implementation were “no more than conjecture.” The Court attached an explicit caveat: “The Court's disposition of this application does not mean that any measure taken by the Government to implement the Order will necessarily be lawful.”
The practical effect is narrower than the headlines suggest, and the distinction matters. Judge Indira Talwani of the District of Massachusetts had issued two injunctions. The Supreme Court lifted the first, from June 2026, which covered the 24 jurisdictions that brought the states' suit. The second, issued August 11 in the case brought by the League of Women Voters and other non-profits, is nationwide and remains in force. USPS had already published its final rule but said it would not implement it for November without Supreme Court clearance.
Election law professor Rick Hasen expects the trial court to respond by amending the surviving injunction: “I expect that the trial court will now amend [the second] injunction and issue a new injunction that will stop USPS from implementing its now final rule.”
Sotomayor and Kagan dissented together, writing that the majority's decision “merely postpones adjudication” without resolving the substantive constitutional questions. Jackson dissented separately, warning that the ruling “needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections” and “violates well-established precedents concerning this Court's equitable discretion.”