The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in favor of changes backed by President Donald Trump, but new challenges are being filed.
Published August 27, 2026
New restrictions on how the U.S. Postal Service handles mail-in ballots are now in effect, despite ongoing court challenges to the measure touted by President Donald Trump.
The Postal Service’s announcement Thursday comes as states prepare to mail millions of ballots to voters ahead of the midterm elections scheduled for Nov. 3 across the country.
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“The government has since received such relief from these injunctions, meaning that the injunctions no longer prevent implementation of the rules for federal elections on or before November 3, 2026,” the independent federal agency said.
The new procedure means the agency will use information from each U.S. state to create a list of voters and send ballots only to individuals on that list.
On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Trump administration, clearing the way for new measures. But other court challenges to the rule continue, including a new lawsuit filed Wednesday by 24 states in federal court in Massachusetts. State attorneys general also argue that the measure is unconstitutional and would cause “serious, imminent, and irreparable harm” to states by imposing “new and onerous mail-in voting requirements” just before the November election.
Voting by mail has been a favorite target of President Trump, who has argued that it breeds fraud despite strong evidence to the contrary and his own use of voting methods. President Trump has argued that states are not doing an adequate job of verifying who is sending mail-in ballots and that those who are registered to vote meet requirements such as being a U.S. citizen.
In March, President Trump signed an executive order requiring his administration to create a list of voters and require the Postal Service to deliver mail-in ballots only to those on that list.
The Postal Service had been developing rules for handling mail-in ballots under the directive, but enforcement was put on hold after Democratic officials and voting rights groups in dozens of states filed legal challenges in federal court.
Monday’s Supreme Court case, with a 6-3 conservative majority, ruled in favor of the Trump administration on one of those key issues. Officials from dozens of states had sued to block the executive order, arguing that the U.S. Constitution gives states and Congress the power to conduct elections and that Trump’s changes could lead to chaos and partisan abuse.
Then, after a judge ruled in favor of officials in the midterm elections, the Trump administration appealed to the Supreme Court in late July on procedural grounds, arguing that the states had filed the lawsuit prematurely. The court did not rule on the constitutionality of the order.
Voting by mail is becoming increasingly popular among voters in both Republican and Democratic parties, accounting for about 30% of ballots in the 2024 presidential election, according to federal data. Despite President Trump’s claims of problems with mail-in voting, experts agree that mail-in voting is safe. A 2025 Brookings Institution study found only about four cases of fraud per 10 million mail-in ballots.
