The administration of President Donald Trump has once again turned to the Supreme Court of the United States to request permission for the Postal Service (USPS) to implement new rules for mail-in voting ahead of the November 2026 midterm elections, reported the news service SCOTUS Wire.
The new request arrived just two days after a federal judge blocked the measure, warning that its implementation, less than 70 days before the elections, could jeopardize the mail-in voting rights of millions of Americans.
This is the third request submitted by the administration to the Supreme Court in this dispute. The most recent petition, registered under the number 26A305 and filed by Attorney General D. John Sauer, replaced another that the Department of Justice withdrew this Sunday to streamline the process before the highest court.
The litigation accelerated on Friday when federal judge Indira Talwani of the District of Massachusetts issued a preliminary injunction preventing the implementation of the new USPS regulation while the legal proceedings are ongoing.
Talwani stated that the plaintiffs will likely demonstrate that the measure is illegal and unconstitutional, and she warned about its potential consequences just weeks before the elections.
"The immediate implementation of the Final Rule, issued less than seventy days before the November 2026 elections, threatens to disenfranchise millions of American citizens who wish to vote by mail," the judge stated.
What changes with the new rule?
The regulation stems from an executive order signed by Trump in March 2026, titled "Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections."
Among other provisions, it requires states to provide information such as the name, address, and barcode of the recipients of electoral mail through an electronic portal. It would also allow the USPS to reject certain mailings addressed to voters that cannot be verified using a federal database.
The Trump administration argues that the requirements are limited and fall under the Postal Service's authority to establish the conditions under which it processes election mail.
"The final rule of the Postal Service imposes only modest requirements for envelope design and recipient information," the government argued before the Supreme Court. According to the administration, the measure "clearly does not usurp control of the state electoral administration," but rather establishes requirements for processing certain election-related mail.
The plaintiffs, including the state of California and the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts, hold the opposing view: they believe that the federal government is unlawfully interfering in the administration of elections, a responsibility that the Constitution primarily assigns to the states.
A race against time
The dispute takes on special urgency due to the approaching legislative elections on November 3, 2026.
North Carolina began sending out the first mail-in ballots for the general elections last week, becoming the first state to do so this year.
The litigation is part of a broader dispute over how far the federal government can go in regulating electoral processes. In February, Trump suggested that Republicans should "nationalize" elections, remarks that drew criticism even from leaders of his own party, including John Thune, the Senate Republican majority leader, and Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House.
Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, initially responsible for handling emergency requests from that jurisdiction, ordered on Sunday that the opposing parties respond to the government's petition by 4:00 p.m. on September 9.
From then on, the Supreme Court will have to decide whether to allow the new Postal Service rules to take effect while the litigation continues, a decision with immediate consequences for mail-in voting less than two months before the midterm elections.
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