Supreme Court Deals Trump a Major Setback, Rejects Emergency Mail Ballot Bid Before Midterms [WATCH]

The United States Supreme Court on Monday afternoon denied President Trump’s emergency request to restrict mail ballots ahead of the midterm elections, leaving his administration without the immediate relief it sought from the nation’s highest court.

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson referred the emergency application to the full Court.

The request centered on a final rule concerning election ballot mail and the authority of the Postal Service to regulate ballot envelope designs and addressee information.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh concurred with the denial, pointing to the limited time available before the elections.

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He said state and local election officials did not have sufficient time to implement the rule reasonably before voting began.

“For that reason, I concur in the denial of the application for stay,” Kavanaugh wrote.

Conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented from the Court’s decision.

Alito argued that the majority had wrongly rejected the government’s application to pause a universal injunction blocking the final rule.

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“The Court incorrectly denies the Government’s application for a stay of a universal injunction that bars implementation of a final rule concerning election ballot mail,” Alito wrote, with Thomas joining the dissent.

The Trump administration had made a new appeal to the Supreme Court earlier this month after a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction.

That injunction blocked President Trump’s executive order involving the Post Office’s rules for mail ballots.

United States District Judge Indira Talwani, an Obama appointee, recently replaced the Temporary Restraining Order that she had granted last month.

Talwani has been assigned to two separate lawsuits challenging Trump’s executive order concerning mail ballots.

DOJ Solicitor John Sauer argued in an earlier emergency petition that the Postal Service has the legal authority to regulate the designs used for mail ballot envelopes.

His argument placed the dispute squarely on the Postal Service’s authority over the federal mail system.

Sauer told the Supreme Court that the Postal Service’s new rule “imposes only modest envelope-design and addressee-information requirements for federal-election ballots sent.”

He also argued that the rule regulates the United States mail rather than federal elections themselves.

According to Sauer, states using the federal mail system for elections cannot demand that their election mail be exempt from rules concerning envelope design and recipient information.

“The Rule’s regulation of the U.S. Mail, not federal elections, is plainly constitutional,” Sauer wrote.

Sauer continued, “While the States have primary authority to regulate the manner of elections, they cannot choose to use the federal mails to carry out their elections but then insist that their election-related mail is somehow exempt from the Postal Service’s rulemaking authority, conferred by Congress, to regulate envelope design and addressee information.”

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On Sunday, Sauer returned to the Supreme Court with another appeal in a separate case.

He asked the high court to overturn Talwani’s preliminary injunction, continuing the administration’s effort to put the Postal Service rule into effect.

The legal fight arrived as states were already preparing to distribute ballots for the midterm elections.

North Carolina had already sent out mail ballots on Friday, adding urgency to the dispute over whether election officials could reasonably comply with the proposed requirements.

Kavanaugh’s concurrence focused specifically on that shrinking timetable.

His stated reason for supporting the denial was that state and local officials lacked sufficient time to implement the rule reasonably before the elections.

Alito and Thomas took the opposite position, objecting to the Court’s refusal to stay the universal injunction.

Their dissent maintained that the injunction improperly prevented implementation of the final rule governing election ballot mail.

The Supreme Court’s denial leaves Talwani’s preliminary injunction in place while the two lawsuits assigned to her proceed.

For Trump, the immediate effort to enforce the disputed Postal Service requirements before the midterms has been blocked at the high court.

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