SCOTUS, US judiciary, DOJ, and Justice 14 September 2026-

14 September
Supreme Court Rejects Trump’s Restrictions on Voting by Mail
The ruling is a major loss for the Trump administration, which wanted to dramatically change how Americans vote by mail in the midterm elections.
(NYT) The Supreme Court on Monday blocked a Trump administration plan to dramatically change how Americans vote by mail in the lead-up to the midterm elections, a major loss for President Trump, who has long claimed without evidence that fraud is rampant in mail voting.
The ruling was a resounding win for Democratic-led states and voting rights groups, which had argued that the plan was unconstitutional and an existential threat to the democratic process.
… Monday’s order was the second time in less than a month that the Supreme Court had weighed in on Trump’s mail-in ballot restrictions. In late August, the justices said President Trump could proceed with implementing his executive order. The challengers, they said, could not demonstrate sufficient harm because the voting rules had not yet taken effect. At the time, the justices cautioned that their order was preliminary and not a final decision about whether the president’s order “will necessarily be lawful.” The majority added: “On that score, time will tell.” In August, it was the three liberal justices in the dissent with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warning of “chaos and uncertainty” in the upcoming election. For more coverage of the court’s initial handling of the case
… Only two justices noted their dissent from the order blocking Trump’s restrictions. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, two of the court’s most conservative justices, said they would have granted the administration’s request to allow the new rules to take effect.
In his nearly eight-page dissent, Justice Samuel Alito cited the Postal Service’s broad authority to regulate the mail. He said the administration’s new rules appear similar to other requirements for sending mail such as listing a recipient’s address and affixing stamps. In siding with the administration, he said the government has “a strong interest in enforcing the rule, and implementing it will also ‘enhance the visibility of Federal Ballot Mail’ in order to better detect election fraud.” Justice Alito acknowledged the states’ practical concerns about implementing the rules so close to the midterm elections. “I take that problem very seriously, but it is not enough to convince me to deny the application,” he wrote, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas.
The court’s brief order blocking the Trump administration’s mail-in ballot restrictions included little reasoning, stating only that the government is “unlikely to succeed on the merits” of its challenge to a lower-court ruling. But Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh provided some explanation for his decision to join the majority citing the fast-approaching November election. In a one-paragraph concurrence, the justice said there is “at least a fair prospect” that the Postal Service has the authority to eventually carry out the new rules. But he said applying those rules in the 2026 election would be “arbitrary and capricious” because state and local election officials “do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before the elections.”