The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Monday to let it enforce an executive order that would restrict mail-in voting, after a federal appeals court kept the order blocked in nearly half the states just months before the November midterm elections.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the justices that a Massachusetts federal judge acted too soon when she struck down key parts of the order, which blocked federal agencies from carrying it out in 23 states and the District of Columbia. Sauer said the order only directs agencies to study changes and has not yet produced a final rule, so no state has suffered harm.
“The district court preemptively decided that whatever the agencies may choose to do will necessarily be unlawful,” he wrote. He asked the court to pause the injunction while the case moves through the appeals court, and to grant an immediate stay in the meantime.
President Donald Trump signed an order in March that directs the Department of Homeland Security to compile lists of confirmed U.S. citizens in each state and send them to election officials, along with directing the U.S. Postal Service to draft rules on mail-in and absentee ballots. California and 22 other Democratic-led states sued three days after Trump signed the order, arguing the Constitution gives states and Congress, not the president, power over elections.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani ruled in June that the administration lacked power to build its own citizen-voter database and that the Postal Service could not impose new rules on states’ mail ballots by itself. She also found the order’s enforcement language amounted to an improper threat against local election officials.
In Monday’s filing, the administration leaned on a 2020 case, Trump v. New York, in which the justices threw out a challenge to a separate Trump order on census counts because it was too soon to know how agencies would carry it out. Sauer argued the same logic applies here. The order tells agencies to act only “to the extent feasible and consistent with applicable law.” That wording, he said, means the Postal Service and Homeland Security could still drop or narrow the changes once they finish reviewing public comments and checking what the law allows.
The filing follows a string of fights over how the 2026 midterms will run. Earlier this month, Trump gave a prime-time address reviving his claim that the 2020 election was rigged, this time pointing to China, without providing any new evidence.
The filing also follows a Supreme Court ruling in late June that let states keep counting mail ballots that arrive after Election Day if postmarked on time.
You can read the full filing below.
