On Monday, the Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration's attempt to limit mail-in voting for now, keeping in place a lower court decision that blocks the U.S. Postal Service from implementing new restrictions.

According to ABC News, the ruling stated that "the Government is unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge" to the preliminary injunction, and it clears the way for states to continue sending out mail-in ballots as planned ahead of the midterms.

The disputed policy would have required states to report basic voter information — a voter's name and home address attached to a unique barcode on every mail-in ballot — and postal workers would then deliver ballots only to voters on the state-provided list.

The outcome is striking because it arrives less than two months before midterm elections that both parties expect to be closely contested, and it halts a change the administration had framed as modest.

ABC News reports that the Trump administration insisted the rules would impose only "modest" ballot design and review requirements, and that submitting name, address, and barcode information of intended recipients was neither onerous nor intrusive.

Democratic-led states and voter advocacy groups, however, argued the new USPS regulations were an attempt to federalize elections that are historically and constitutionally managed by each state — and to make voting by mail harder for everyday citizens.

With the injunction left standing, election officials can run their existing mail ballot programs without redesigning envelopes or handing voter lists to the Postal Service.

The vote was far from unanimous.

According to ABC News, Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented in an eight-page opinion written by Alito, who argued the new policy falls within the Postal Service's broad authority to regulate the mail, noted the agency is broadly exempted from the administrative law states have used to challenge "arbitrary and capricious" Trump administration actions, and said plaintiffs did not meet the high bar to justify blocking the policy — which the dissent called a "Hail Mary pass" — adding that the organizations that sued lacked standing.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed with the majority but for different reasons: he wrote there is "at least a fair prospect" the rule falls within USPS statutory authority, yet applying it in the 2026 elections would be an arbitrary and capricious violation of the Administrative Procedure Act because officials lack sufficient time to implement it before the elections.

The ruling fits a broader question Slate raises about the current Court: how much weight it gives other institutions in the legal system. In Beaird v.

United States, argued Tuesday, Slate reports that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson — a former vice chair of the U.S. Sentencing Commission — pressed that the commission's guidelines and commentary are inextricably linked, while Justice Neil Gorsuch favored deciding the case along the lines of Loper Bright, the decision that ended judicial deference to agencies' statutory interpretations.

Slate characterizes the term as a pattern of a court "insisting it's the only entity in all of law whose legal opinions matter," a trend it argues harms popular constitutionalism.

Against that backdrop, a ruling that preserves state election administration — rather than federalizing it — stands out as a rare check that survives.

The immediate stakes are practical for voters and election officials.

ABC News notes the ruling likely ensures states can continue mailing out ballots for the midterms as planned, which matters because the disputed design requirements — voter names, home addresses, and barcodes tied to every ballot — would have taken months to build into existing systems.

The broader stakes concern constitutional control of elections: the contested provisions would have made USPS the gatekeeper for which ballots get delivered, an arrangement critics saw as shifting authority from state election officials to a federal agency.

The dissent's argument that USPS has broad power over the mail, and the administration's insistence that the data demands were minimal, signal the underlying legal fight is not resolved on the merits — only deferred.

The legal battle over ballot restrictions has effectively been punted to the 2028 election.

ABC News reports that, based on the decision, at least three justices appear open to the Trump administration's arguments for the next time this case or a similar one returns to the high court — Kavanaugh's concurring opinion stressed timing rather than authority, while Alito and Thomas dissented outright.

That means the same or tightened USPS restrictions could be reintroduced on a calendar that gives states more runway, eliminating the procedural grounds that carried the day this time.

For now, states retain control of their mail ballot programs through the midterms, and voters will receive ballots under the systems already in place.