The Supreme Court has dismissed one of two injunctions that had blocked the Trump administration's changes to U.S. Postal Service (USPS) regulations concerning mail-in ballots. The 6-3 decision, issued on August 24, 2026, found that the plaintiff states lacked standing to sue because they could not demonstrate concrete harm from the executive order.
The lawsuit was brought by California and 23 other states in response to a White House executive order. This order directed the USPS to create "State Citizenship Lists" for each state, identifying voters eligible for mail-in ballots based on federal data. The order specified that these lists would be updated and sent to states 60 days before an election. It also clarified that an individual's presence on the list did not confirm voter registration or override state laws that might preclude registration.
Two federal courts had previously deemed these provisions unconstitutional, viewing them as an intrusion on states' constitutional authority to manage elections. However, the Supreme Court's conservative majority disagreed, stating that the order was an "internal directive" from the President to executive branch subordinates, and "neither requires nor forbids anything of anyone outside the executive branch." The majority emphasized that the order's provision for transmitting lists was prefaced with "to the extent feasible and consistent with applicable law," making claims of harm by states "entirely speculative" at this stage.
The Court further noted that any actual injury to states would stem from "downstream action that the Secretary might take in the future to implement the USPS sections," highlighting the conditional nature of such actions.
Another section of the executive order directed the Department of Justice (DOJ) to prioritize investigations and prosecutions of state and local election officials who knowingly permit non-citizen voting. The majority characterized this as internal guidance that neither regulated state voter registration nor limited states' authority over election rules. Since it only prioritized enforcement of existing laws, the Court concluded it had no direct impact on states, thus denying them standing to challenge it.
Despite this ruling, the USPS regulations remain blocked under a separate, nationwide injunction issued by a federal court in Massachusetts. The USPS moved to finalize the new regulations on Friday, even with this injunction still in place.
The three liberal justices—Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson—issued two dissenting opinions. Justices Sotomayor and Kagan argued that the majority's decision merely "postpones adjudication" and failed to address substantive constitutional questions. They contended that a "commonsense reading" of the executive order, supported by the government's own statements, indicated a "sufficiently concrete and imminent injury" to the states.
Justice Sotomayor expressed skepticism at the majority's view that the sections on USPS state citizenship lists and DOJ prosecutions were unrelated or non-threatening. She wrote that "to pretend that the lists assembled [in one section] bear no relation to the prosecutions directed by [the second section] is to ignore the structure of the Executive Order and the Government’s words alike." She further cited the long-recognized principle that "people do not lightly disregard public officers’ thinly veiled threats to institute criminal proceedings against them if they do not come around."
Justice Jackson, in her separate dissent, was more direct, stating that the District Court had found the President's order unlawful, and the government did not defend its lawfulness before the Supreme Court. She noted that "no judge or Justice has held (or holds today) that the Order comports with the Constitution." Despite this, she observed, the Court granted "equitable relief to proceed with implementing the challenged Order" on the grounds that the plaintiff states lacked a concrete injury for Article III purposes, as a final rule had not been issued when the complaint was filed.
