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Washington — President Trump’s administration asked the Supreme Court on Monday to intervene in a 23-state challenge to his executive order that seeks to impose new restrictions for mail ballots and directs the Homeland Security Department to create lists of eligible voters.
The request for emergency relief to the Supreme Court comes after a federal appeals court on Sunday left in place a lower court decision that blocked implementation of key provisions of the president’s executive order in nearly half the states ahead of the November midterm elections.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that the district court’s injunction is “extraordinary” because it prevents federal agencies from taking steps to implement Mr. Trump’s directive, which he said “merely sets forth general policy guidance” and aims to promote election integrity.
“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.'”
Mr. Trump signed the executive order at issue in the case in March. The measure directs the Homeland Security secretary to compile and send to each state a “state citizenship list” of U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote. It also instructs the U.S. Postal Service to come up with new rules for mail ballots, including requiring them to be marked in a specific envelope and allowing mail ballots to be sent to voters on their state’s list.
Days after the president rolled out his directive, a group of 23 states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit arguing that the executive order is unlawful.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, who sits on the federal court in Massachusetts, sided with the states in June and barred the Trump administration from implementing provisions related to mail ballots and the state citizenship lists for the Nov. 3 federal elections in the 23 states that sued.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit then declined to let the Trump administration move forward with the executive order.
Sauer argued that Talwani’s injunction was “premature,” since federal agencies are only working to put together plans to put the president’s executive order in place.
He said the states’ challenge is to “hypothetical” agency action, and the president is allowed under the law to direct his subordinates to consider “appropriate” action.
“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.