Trump administration asks Supreme Court to weigh in on mail-in voting executive order

The Justice Department asked the Supreme Court on Monday to weigh in on its dispute with 23 states regarding President Donald Trump's mail-in ballot executive order.

The executive order, issued in March of this year, directs the Department of Homeland Security to compile lists of eligible voters nationwide, on a state-by-state basis, and seeks to block the U.S. Postal Service from delivering absentee ballots to voters not on state-approved rolls.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that a lower court's injunction on the order was premature and "extraordinary" because it blocks federal officials from implementing Trump's order that merely aims to promote election integrity, according to CBS News.

"The Executive Order functions only to direct the President's subordinates to take appropriate and lawful action to implement the President's policy objectives," he wrote. "By stopping the relevant agencies and officials from implementing that Order with respect to the November 2026 federal election, the injunction operates as 'an improper intrusion by a federal court into the workings of a coordinate branch of the Government.'"

The request comes after two dozen states sued to block the order, and a federal judge in June barred the Trump administration from implementing provisions related to the mail-in ballots and the state citizenship lists for the November midterms in the states that sued.

An appeals court upheld the lower court ruling over the weekend. The states argued that the president's order was unconstitutional because U.S. states and Congress have the authority to set election rules and not the president.

Sauer urged the Supreme Court to get involved, stating that if the administration later wins the case, then the damage would already be done. 

"The harms to voter integrity in that election if the government's policy is not in place cannot be undone even if the government later prevails on the merits of its appeal," Sauer wrote.

Misty Severi is a news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.