President Trump asked the Supreme Court Monday to allow him to implement his executive order directing the U.S. Postal Service to police mail-in voting by refusing to deliver ballots to people whose eligibility hasn’t been verified by the feds.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer petitioned the justices just days after losing in an appeals court.
Mr. Sauer said lower courts were premature in stepping in at this point, saying agencies’ plans for carrying out the president’s orders are too preliminary at this point. He asked the justices to allow the planning to proceed while the case develops.
Otherwise, he said, the president’s opponents will run out the clock and Mr. Trump won’t be able to impose his rules ahead of the 2026 midterm election.
“This premature injunction imposes serious irreparable harm on the federal government,” Mr. Sauer wrote.
The justices gave the president’s opponents a week to respond.
Mr. Trump’s order had directed Homeland Security to produce citizenship lists for states, which they could use to scour their own rolls for noncitizen names.
He also ordered the Postal Service to come up with standardized envelopes for election mail, and to refuse to deliver election materials that didn’t meet the standard. And the post office would refuse to deliver ballots to names that didn’t appear on states’ lists of approved eligible voters.
Federal agencies were directed to withhold money from states and localities that didn’t cooperate, and the Justice Department was ordered to pursue investigations against violators.
All of that was blocked by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, an Obama appointee to the court in Massachusetts who has emerged as a frequent legal obstacle for the Trump administration.
She said the order “attempts to intimidate local election officials” into doing Mr. Trump’s bidding. She said under the Constitution, states are charged with administering elections, with some standards for federal elections also set by Congress.
The First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals several days ago sided with Judge Talwani, rejecting Mr. Trump’s request to stay her June ruling.
Federal lawyers offered many of the same arguments in that court that Mr. Sauer raised Monday, saying the case isn’t ripe because the government’s plans aren’t finalized.
The appeals court rejected that, finding states are already having to grapple with the order.
For example, nearly half of the states already had obtained ballot envelopes that wouldn’t have complied with the Postal Service’s standards under Mr. Trump’s order.
“The plaintiff states have no practical choice but to respond to the EO now,” the three-judge panel ruled.
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