Trump scores Supreme Court win on mail-in voting restrictions before midterms
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court handed the Trump administration a victory on Monday, allowing it to enforce President Donald Trump’s "election integrity" executive order restricting mail-in voting ahead of the November midterms.
The high court lifted an injunction that had blocked the order in 23 states that challenged it after the administration appealed in July.
The U.S. Postal Service and Justice Department said they would immediately implement the revised mail-ballot restrictions after the ruling.
Most immediately, the ruling clears the path for the U.S. Postal Service to check its distribution of mail-in ballots against a list of citizens maintained by the Department of Homeland Security. But it’s also a significant political victory for the Trump administration as it has advocated against the widespread use of mail-in-voting, citing what it believes is a heightened vulnerability to tampering and voter fraud.
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Most recently, Trump slammed what he called a suspiciously high volume of mail-in-ballots cast for Cynthia Raman in the 2026 LA mayoral race primaries.
"You know, they don’t have voting booths; everything’s by mail. I don’t think a Republican can win in California unless you pass the Save America Act," Trump told Fox News, referring to GOP legislation to narrow the scope of mail-in voting and voter-ID requirements.
"They’re going to have to get rid of mail-in voting."
Like many onlooking conservatives, Trump pointed out that, after election night, the vast majority of Democratic votes had been for Nithya Raman, creating a delayed outpouring of support.
Fox News Digital has not reviewed any particular case of election fraud tied to the LA mayoral race.
Even so, Trump’s original executive order looked to eliminate any ambiguity. Titled "Preserving and protecting the integrity of American elections," it directed federal agencies to compile citizenship-based lists of eligible voters and ordered the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail-in ballots only to people appearing on those approved lists.
"Several Federal laws, including 18 U.S.C. 1015 and 611, prohibit foreign nationals from registering to vote or voting in Federal elections. Yet States fail adequately to vet voters’ citizenship, and, in recent years, the Department of Justice has failed to prioritize and devote sufficient resources for enforcement of these provisions," the executive order reads.
Where critics of the order saw a federal effort to dictate the terms of state-run elections, the court on Monday sided with the administration, stating that the way the executive order was made put requirements only on federal agencies.
In essence, the order didn’t put any new requirements on the states themselves.
"[It] directs the Secretary of Homeland Security to take appropriate action to create and distribute State Citizenship Lists. This provision is an internal directive from the President to a subordinate. It imposes no obligations on the States, so they ‘suffer no concrete harm from’ it, and without concrete harm, there is no standing," the court wrote.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.
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Notably, the court stipulated that the ruling narrowly addresses the injunction that had prevented its implementation and does not speak to the lawfulness of the order itself. Further legal challenges against the order may still come down the road.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates. The Associated Press contributed to this report.