The Trump administration on Sunday asked the Supreme Court yet again to allow its plans to restrict mail-in voting before the midterms, setting up what will likely be the final legal showdown for the president’s push to impose limits on mail voting before the midterms election.
In an emergency application, lawyers for the administration urged the justices to clear the way for new U.S. Postal Service rules to go into effect, changing the way the agency handles mail-in ballots in the weeks before the midterm elections. They also asked the justices to allow the rules to immediately go into effect while the court considers the application.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer urged the justices to move swiftly to allow the Postal Service to proceed with its plans, asserting that the new rule “does not seize control of states’ administration of elections — it simply imposes reasonable preparation requirements for certain election-related mail.”
The emergency request marks the latest turn in a dizzying legal fight over mail-in voting, even as states begin distributing mail-in ballots to voters. The upshot has become clear in recent days: It will be the Supreme Court that has the final say on President Trump’s plans to restrict mail voting in the midterms.
It’s unclear how fast the justices will move and announce a ruling. Unlike in the court’s routine cases, which unfold over months with full briefing and argument, emergency requests like the one from the Trump administration are typically decided on a short timeline without full briefing or argument.
This latest request came after a federal judge in Boston on Friday announced she was freezing indefinitely the Postal Service plan, while litigation proceeds through the lower courts.
The Trump administration had already filed emergency request to the justices challenging a shorter-term pause she had imposed on the plan. But the trial court judge acted to extend her freeze before the justices ruled, necessitating a new request from the administration for Supreme Court action.
The trial court judge, Indira Talwani, wrote that the legal challenge to the Postal Service plan by Democratic-led states and voter rights organizations was likely to succeed. The groups had argued the plan violated the Constitution’s separation of powers, which gives states and Congress responsibility over elections, not the executive.
Judge Talwani found that lawyers for the Trump administration sought to “avoid” the separation of powers issue by “denying that the final rule is an election rule.” She added: “This denial rings hollow.”
She also dismissed arguments by the Trump administration that the Postal Service was acting under the authority of Congress, writing that “throughout its body of election legislation, Congress has never delegated its Elections Clause power to the USPS.”
She added that the Postal Service rule “clashes with Congress’s statutory scheme, and is unconstitutional where it intrudes not only on Congress’s elections clause powers but also that power left to the states.”
Mr. Sauer pushed back on Judge Talwani’s assessment in the brief to the justices, asserting that the Postal Service plan fell under the agency’s bounds to adopt rules “as may be necessary in the execution of its functions” and compared the rules for mail-in ballots to Postal Service “preparation requirements for the mailing of cremated remains and replica explosives.”
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