The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Monday to let it fully implement the Donald Trump mail voting order, a March 31 directive titled Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections. The request seeks to lift lower-court limits on provisions affecting mail-in and absentee voting.
The justices told the states to respond by 4 p.m. EDT on Monday, Aug. 3. Until then, the order remains blocked in the states that sued.
March 31 order
President Donald Trump signed the order on March 31. It directs the U.S. Postal Service to propose rules for mail-in and absentee ballots and tells the Department of Homeland Security to compile state citizenship lists of individuals in each state who are U.S. citizens over 18.
The order also says the USPS rules must provide that the Postal Service can send mail-in ballots only to voters whose names appear on those lists. That requirement is the part the administration is now asking the Supreme Court to let move forward.
Judge Indira Talwani
District Judge Indira Talwani issued an order on June 25 that blocked the federal government from implementing the mail-in ballot and state citizenship list provisions for the Nov. 3, 2026, elections in the states that filed suit. The challenge was brought by 23 states and the District of Columbia, led by California, in federal court in Massachusetts.
D. John Sauer, the U.S. Solicitor General, asked for an immediate administrative stay and said the federal agencies have not yet decided how they will implement the order. He wrote that there is not enough time to obtain ordinary appellate relief before the November election, saying, “Even if the agencies’ implementation plans end up being entirely lawful, there is not enough time to obtain ordinary appellate relief from the injunction in order to carry them out before the November election, especially given that any such plans will need to be implemented well before November given the timing of election procedures concerning voter-roll verification and mail voting.”
1st Circuit order
A divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit denied the government's request to intervene on Saturday. The majority said that if the order took effect for the fall elections, it would “sow confusion and threaten disenfranchisement of many eligible voters.”
That leaves the Supreme Court with the immediate question of whether to grant the stay the Trump administration wants. If the justices act, they would decide whether the challenged provisions can start operating before election procedures lock in mail voting rules for Nov. 3, 2026.
