The US Supreme Court on Monday afternoon denied President Trump’s emergency request to restrict mail-in ballots ahead of the midterm elections.
Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson referred the emergency application to the Court.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh concurred and said state and local election officials do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before the elections.
“For that reason, I concur in the denial of the application for stay,” Kavanaugh wrote.
Conservative justices Alito and Thomas dissented.
“The Court incorrectly denies the Government’s application for a stay of a universal injunction that bars implementation of a final rule concerning election ballot mail,” Justice Alito, with whom Justice Thomas joined, dissenting.
Earlier this month, the Trump Administration made a new appeal to the Supreme Court after a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking President Trump’s executive order related to the Post Office’s mail-in ballot rules.
US District Judge Indira Talwani, an Obama appointee, recently replaced the Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) that she granted last month.
DOJ Solicitor John Sauer argued in his previous emergency petition that the Postal Service possesses legal authority to regulate mail-in ballot designs.
John Sauer told the Supreme Court that the Postal Service’s new rule “imposes only modest envelope-design and addressee-information requirements for federal-election ballots sent.”
“The Rule’s regulation of the U.S. Mail—not federal elections — is plainly constitutional,” John Sauer wrote. “While the States have primary authority to regulate the manner of elections, they cannot choose to use the federal mails to carry out their elections but then insist that their election-related mail is somehow exempt from the Postal Service’s rulemaking authority, conferred by Congress, to regulate envelope design and addressee information.”
On Sunday, John Sauer made another appeal to the Supreme Court in a separate case and asked the high court to overturn Judge Talwani’s preliminary injunction.
Judge Talwani has been assigned to two separate lawsuits against President Trump’s mail-in ballot executive order.
States are already preparing to send out ballots for the midterm elections.
North Carolina already sent out mail-in ballots on Friday.
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