The Trump administration's quest to tighten up mail-in voting just ran into a judicial speed bump wearing a black robe. As Conservative Brief reported, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson opted not to grant the administration's emergency request to restore enforcement of Trump's executive order restricting mail-in ballots. Instead, she told the plaintiffs they have seven days to file their response. So basically, she said "let me hear the other side first," which is apparently a controversial concept in 2025.
Here's the backstory. Trump signed an executive order back on March 31 called "Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections," which sounds like the title of the most boring thriller novel ever written. The order tells the U.S. Postal Service to create new rules for handling mail-in and absentee ballots and instructs the Department of Homeland Security to build state lists of citizens who are 18 or older. Under these proposed rules, USPS would only deliver mail-in ballots to voters whose names show up on those citizenship lists.
Naturally, a coalition of 23 states plus the District of Columbia, with California leading the charge, said "not so fast" and filed suit in federal court in Massachusetts. Their argument? The Constitution gives states the power to determine voter eligibility and regulate the "Times, Places, and Manner" of congressional elections. U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, appointed by Obama, sided with the states on June 25 and blocked the mail-in ballot and citizenship list provisions for the November 2026 elections in those states.
The government tried to get the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals to step in, but a divided panel said no. The majority warned that implementing the order before the fall elections "would sow confusion and threaten disenfranchisement of many eligible voters." Nothing says election integrity like accidentally preventing eligible citizens from voting, right?
Solicitor General D. John Sauer then went to the Supreme Court on Monday, calling the lower court's blocking order "extraordinary" and arguing it "flouts settled" legal principles. His main point? The lawsuit is premature because federal agencies haven't even figured out how to implement the executive order yet. In other words, "You can't sue us over our plan because we haven't planned our plan yet." Sauer also warned that if the lower court's order stands, there won't be enough time to get everything in place before November, describing the situation as causing "serious irreparable harm."
Meanwhile, Congress, which is controlled by Republicans, apparently has better things to do than help the president on this front. The states now have until August 13 to respond to the government's filing, per Jackson's order. So everyone gets to sit around for another week waiting for the next chapter of America's favorite legal drama: "Can We Please Just Figure Out How to Vote."
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