The US Supreme Court recently lifted a district court injunction that had blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order overhauling mail voting. This decision, issued in a per curiam opinion, determined that the states had not demonstrated an injury sufficiently concrete and imminent to render their claims justiciable before the upcoming November midterm elections. In the case of Trump v. California, the court found the government’s argument persuasive that the states’ claims were not justiciable. The order was characterized as an internal directive to presidential subordinates, thus not imposing requirements or prohibitions on those outside the Executive Branch.
Executive Order No. 14399, issued in March, mandates the US Department of Homeland Security to compile state-by-state “Citizenship Lists” of voters. It instructs the Department of Justice to prioritize prosecution of officials issuing ballots to ineligible voters and directs the US Postal Service to initiate rulemaking on mail ballot envelopes, including requiring barcodes. The court evaluated the states’ alleged injuries prior to any Postal Service rule proposal and considered the potential harm too speculative to establish standing. The Postal Service has since proposed the rule and finalized it shortly before the ruling.
A coalition of 23 states and the District of Columbia challenged the order in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts, where Judge Indira Talwani initially barred its enforcement against them through the midterms. The First Circuit Court of Appeals denied a stay in July, leading the administration to request Supreme Court intervention. In her dissent, Justice Sotomayor suggested that a “common sense reading” of the order, supported by government admissions, indicated a concrete threat to the states. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson criticized the interpretation of the Postal Service’s actions and stressed that the District Court deemed the order unlawful, with no defense of its legality by the government at the Supreme Court level.
The Supreme Court’s action does not resolve the order’s lawfulness but suspends the Massachusetts injunction pending the case’s appeal at the First Circuit and any potential certiorari petition. If the justices deny certiorari, the stay automatically terminates; if granted, the stay continues through the issuance of judgment.