The United States Supreme Court has allowed the Trump administration to implement parts of an executive order on mail-in voting – a voter suppression effort at least 10 weeks ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
On Monday, the conservative majority high court paused the lower court’s ruling that blocked President Trump’s executive order that calls for the Homeland Security secretary, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and the Social Security Administration commissioner to compile a federal citizenship list to determine citizens eligible to vote. The executive order also directs the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail ballots only to people on the lists.
Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor dissented. The court in its decision didn’t say whether Trump’s executive order was lawful.
“The Court’s disposition of this application does not mean that any measure taken by the Government to implement the Order will necessarily be lawful,” the court wrote in its decision.
It is unclear how the administration will move forward or what parts will be implemented.
But Trump’s ability to move forward with parts of the executive order will have a disparate impact on those who rely on voting by mail, including Asian Americans who traditionally rely on mail-in voting, according to legal experts and civil rights organizations. Recently naturalized citizens, who may have language barriers, the elderly, and people with disabilities also rely on voting by mail.
During the 2020 presidential election, a record number of Americans voted by mail, including Asian and Hispanic Americans, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. Many Americans also cast their ballots by mail during the 2024 presidential election.
There is no evidence of widespread noncitizen voting, multiple think tanks have found, including the Bipartisan Policy Center, as the Trump administration has repeatedly claimed.
Democratic officials from the District of Columbia and more than 20 states sued the Trump administration over the executive order, calling it unconstitutional. Civil rights and voting rights organizations have also filed a lawsuit against the administration over its mail-in voting restrictions.
In June, the Supreme Court upheld a Mississippi law that allows mail-in ballots to arrive after Election Day.
Jackson, in her dissent, said the decision will allow election chaos.
“The Government is not injured in the slightest by an injunction stopping it from engaging in this patently unlawful conduct,” Jackson wrote in her dissent.
Advocacy groups and lawmakers, including the Congressional Black Caucus, have also criticized the decision.
“Despite voting by mail himself, Donald Trump has for years blamed vote-by-mail for his 2020 electoral loss and will attempt to use this ruling to further disenfranchise voters in the wake of the racial gerrymandering scheme unleashed by the Court’s Callais decision — robbing Americans of access to free and fair elections in an effort to dismantle our democracy,” Congressional Black Caucus Chair Yvette Clarke of New York and members said in statement.
Clarke and the caucus also said they would work to pass legislation to restore the Voting Rights Act and advance “judicial and electoral reforms” if Democrats win during the midterm elections.
Janet Murguía, president and CEO of UnidosUS, also vowed to fight in the courts and said “access to mail-in ballots is not a convenience; it is essential.
“Mail-in voting is how millions of Americans exercise their constitutional right. Members of our military serving overseas depend on mail-in voting to participate in our democracy,” Murguía said in a statement on Monday. “So do Latino working-class voters who cannot take time off work, who lack reliable transportation, or who have health conditions that make in-person voting difficult.”
