US Supreme Court rejects Trump administration's appeal on mail-in voting

This is a setback for the president. The conservative-majority US Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from the Trump administration aimed at allowing it to more strictly regulate mail-in voting from the crucial midterm elections in November. In a brief ruling, four of the court's six conservative justices, including its president, John Roberts, as well as three progressives, reject the Trump administration's request. They believe that the government is unlikely to prevail when the case is judged on the merits and that it has not demonstrated the need to suspend, in the meantime, the first instance decision.

“The Supreme Court had no choice but to make the right decision,” said the Senate minority leader, Democrat Chuck Schumer, stressing that “the plan to make voting more difficult was manifestly unconstitutional.” The influential civil rights association ACLU hailed a “great victory for the right to vote, the integrity of elections and democracy.” “This decision means that all 50 states can continue to use their current mail-in voting procedures, which have proven safe, secure and reliable for decades,” the association added. The Democratic governor of California, Gavin Newsom, considered a potential candidate for the White House in two years, also hailed “a good day for democracy, the rule of law and Americans wishing to exercise their constitutional right to vote”.

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The stakes were high: almost a third of American voters voted by mail in 2024, according to the United States organization. This decision comes less than two months before the November 3 elections, which are off to a bad start for Donald Trump's Republican majority. The American right could lose its slim majority in the House, or even the Senate, to the Democrats.

Risk of “arbitrariness”

Monday's decision is the latest episode in an intensifying legal battle, as the mailing of the first mail-in ballots to voters has just begun in some states. On September 4, a federal judge extended the suspension until these elections of the new rules issued by the United States Postal Service (USPS) for the delivery of electoral ballots by mail. These rules followed a decree from Donald Trump aimed at more strictly regulating this method of voting. A federal appeals court had already confirmed last week the suspension of measures linked to this decree, but the nine judges of the highest court in the United States had not yet ruled.

Among the conservatives in favor of rejecting the Trump administration's appeal, Judge Brett Kavanaugh wrote, in a separate opinion of agreement, that if, in substance, the new Postal rules could possibly be legally valid, their application from the polls in early November would be “arbitrary”. “State and local election officials do not have enough time to implement them before the election,” he points out.

Only the two most conservative judges, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, expressed their disagreement, believing that the government had demonstrated that a suspension of the first instance decision would be justified.

“Chaos and disenfranchisement”

The appeal judges said Thursday that they shared the conclusions of the first instance court, according to which these new rules for the Post Office, which depends on the executive, “probably” deviate from the Constitution which entrusts Congress and the States with the organization of elections, including federal elections. They also noted the risks mentioned by this federal judge from Boston (north-east) of “chaos and large-scale deprivation of the right to vote of citizens” if these new rules were applied immediately.

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Donald Trump regularly denounces postal voting, to which he largely attributes his defeat - which he still does not recognize - in 2020 against Democrat Joe Biden. On March 31, he signed a decree intended to more strictly regulate postal voting, a measure challenged in court by a group of states governed by Democrats and an organization of women voters.

The decree orders the Immigration and Social Security services to create a federal list of eligible voters, and the Postal Service to issue mail-in ballots only to people on that list. The stated objective is to limit the risk that foreigners will be able to vote in the American elections, a specter regularly raised by Donald Trump and the Republican camp, although the phenomenon is extremely rare, according to official statistics.