AP (“Supreme Court sides with Trump administration on mail voting restrictions ahead of midterms“):
The Supreme Court opened a path Monday for possible implementation of President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting mail-in voting, though it remains unclear how much can be put in place before the fast-approaching midterm elections.
The decision leaves room for additional court challenges that could further slow Trump’s order, and other similar cases have already been filed. The U.S. Postal Service laid out how it would implement the order last week, but time is running short to impose major changes. North Carolina is sending out ballots Sept. 4 overseas and to military voters, and other states will quickly follow suit in just a few weeks.
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority didn’t decide the legality of Trump’s order, instead ruling that states who sued did not have the legal right to challenge it.
While the emergency order is not final, it does have the potential to create chaos around voting across the country, with Trump often questioning the integrity of elections and the nation’s highest court again the possible arbiter of a political controversy.
“The Court’s disposition of this application does not mean that any measure taken by the Government to implement the Order will necessarily be lawful. On that score, time will tell,” the majority wrote in an unsigned order.
The three liberal-leaning justices publicly dissented, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson writing that the rule “lets another shoe drop in the Kafkaesque nightmare that our precedents have been steadily creating for certain plaintiffs who seek to bring election-related challenges.”
[…]
Trump’s executive order, signed in March, calls on his administration to create lists of eligible voters and orders the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail ballots only to people on those lists. New requirements released Friday would forbid the Postal Service from sending mail ballots from any state that does not comply with Trump’s order.
[…]
Democratic officials in 23 states and the District of Columbia sued to block the order. They argued that the Constitution gives states and Congress the power to run elections, and Trump’s changes could lead to chaos and partisan abuse.
It’s important to note that this is simply an order on standing. The Court explicitly did not rule on whether the President has the power to interfere with the states’ ability to send out ballots.
Why didn’t the states have standing to sue to protect their clear, Constitutionally granted authority? Because, technically speaking, the order doesn’t direct them to do anything and the order has not, yet, impacted their ability to exercise their power.
Why, all the President has done is issue lawful orders to the Secretary of Homeland Security, an executive branch official, to take appropriate action to create state citizenship lists. This imposes no obligation on the states!
Sure, the clear intent of the order is for the Secretary to issue orders stopping the Postal Service from distributing ballots from noncompliant states. And potentially seeking criminal prosecution of election officials there. But he hasn’t done either of those things yet! And he might not! So, the issue isn’t ripe, either. Justices aren’t goddamn fortune tellers.
Oh, and several times in the order, the phrase that it must “be implemented consistent with applicable law” is repeated. So, obviously, the implementation will be consistent with applicable law. Ipso. Facto.
Ah, you might be thinking, doesn’t an emergency stay pending appeal require the government to demonstrate that it is likely to succeed on the merits and is likely to suffer irreparable harm absent the stay? Yep! The six Republican-appointed Justices anticipated your objections.
“The Government is likely to prevail on the merits of its argument that the District Court lacked jurisdiction to enter the judgment.” But what about the actual issues? They’re not ripe yet.
Okay, what about the irreparable harm bit? Surely, there’s no significant damage done letting this go through the normal appeals process? Why the rush?
The District Court’s breach of Article III interferes with the internal operations of the Executive Branch. […] The injunction bars Homeland Security from trying to compile Citizenship Lists for about half the States in the Union. It purports to forbid the Attorney General to implement the President’s enforcement priorities as to those same States.2 And it prevents the Postal Service from so much as initiating a rulemaking that could yield a rule applicable to these States. Because reversal of the District Court’s judgment would come too late for the 2026 midterms, the District Court’s errors deal “a serious setback” to the Executive’s “goals” while this litigation unfolds.
There’s also the requirement, the Justices note, that the party seeking the stay “must also demonstrate that the balance of equities does not counsel against relief.” The majority says that one’s not particularly important, so ignore it. The dissenters dissent.
Justices Sotomayor and Jackson complain that, since the executive order in question is plainly unconstitutional, a stay on purely technical grounds should not have been granted. Further, they contend that letting DHS compile the lists creates chaos, since the intent is clearly to muck up the sending of ballots at a crucial point. Alas, those issues aren’t yet ripe for consideration. And, were I a betting man, will not be expedited in the same manner if and when they ripen.
