US Supreme Court Rejects Trump Administration Request to Implement Mail-In Voting Restrictions for November 3 Midterm Elections on September 14

The US Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration's request on September 14 to allow the US Postal Service to enforce new restrictions on mail-in ballots for the November 3, 2026 congressional midterm elections, according to NPR, Bloomberg, CNBC, and Axios. The decision came after North Carolina and Alabama had already begun mailing thousands of ballots to voters and many more states prepared to do the same in the coming days. Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh concurred with the ruling, writing that applying the rule in the 2026 elections would be arbitrary and capricious in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act because state and local election officials do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before the elections. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented and would have granted the administration's request. Several Republican state election officials, including from the mostly vote-by-mail state of Utah, signed on to a Supreme Court brief warning that any attempt to carry out the USPS plan now will almost certainly lead to mistakes, delays, and confusion for both voters and election officials. The decision means the Postal Service is expected to continue delivering ballots as usual, and voting by mail has already begun in states including Alabama, North Carolina and Wisconsin. The ruling is a major setback for President Trump, who has long claimed that elections can never be honest with mail-in ballots and that mail-in voting cost him the 2020 election, despite documented instances of fraud related to voting by mail being rare. Republicans are defending their slim majority in Congress in the midterms, and the last-minute legal wrangling created uncertainty about whether states would have to suddenly upend months of planning.