Left: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is seen during an Evening with Ketanji Brown Jackson at Chapman Conference Center at MDC Wolfson Campus on March 10, 2025, in Miami, Fla. (Photo by Alberto E. Tamargo/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images). Right: President Donald Trump talks about transgender weightlifters as he gives a commencement address at the University of Alabama, Thursday, May 1, 2025, in Tuscaloosa, Ala. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart).
With President Donald Trump's attempted takeover of mail-in voting currently on ice, the states that have so far succeeded in blocking key portions of his executive order are asking the highest court in the land to keep it that way.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta headlined the brief submitted on Monday afternoon at Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's request, in opposition to the Trump administration's emergency application for a stay at the U.S. Supreme Court.
Joined by AGs in Massachusetts, Nevada, Arizona, Connecticut, Maine, Michigan, Washington state, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New Mexico, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Vermont, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C., California urged SCOTUS to leave a judge's injunction in place as the appeal runs its course, since Trump's "directives" of USPS "are plainly unlawful."
"This Court has repeatedly warned about the dangers of altering election rules on the eve of an election. That is exactly what a stay would do here. It would allow the federal government to rush out an unprecedented, legally indefensible voter-verification and ballot-interception program that would, among other things, give the U.S. Postal Service far-reaching new powers and responsibilities," the states said.
To allow such "transformative changes to take effect so close to this fall's elections," the brief maintained, poses "an intolerable risk" of "disenfranchising a substantial number of voters" in the upcoming midterm elections.
"The consequences of allowing such transformative changes to take effect so close to this fall's elections would be extreme. Because of the high risk of errors and the limited window for correcting mistakes, many of the millions of voters who rely on mail voting — especially voters with disabilities and those in rural areas — would likely be denied mail ballots and, as a result, disenfranchised," the brief said.
One week ago, the DOJ sought a stay of U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani's injunction blocking the implementation of Trump's late-March executive order 14399, which the administration called an "extraordinary" bar on "election integrity" efforts. The application directly followed the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' 2-1 decision, which left the injunction in place.
"[T]he injunction is especially indefensible," the administration asserted, "because the agencies are still deliberating over how (if at all) to implement the Order[.]"
The states have now answered that this kind of confusion is exactly why a stay is not warranted.
"Many more voters would be confused — either because they wouldn't receive their mail ballots or would fear that USPS would fail to deliver their voted ballots to state officials for tabulation," the brief said, adding that the "appropriate judicial response to these serious concerns is to recognize plaintiffs' challenge as ripe and prevent disruptive changes to election rules ahead of the rapidly approaching midterms — just as the district court did."
In the event SCOTUS does grant a stay, the states called on the justices to "make clear in its order that neither Purcell nor any other restriction on judicial review would preclude injunctive relief against defendants' unconstitutional interference with state elections laws before the November elections."
Talwani previously ruled that Section 3 of Trump's order, which directed USPS to "refuse to transmit mail ballots for certain voters," was "unconstitutional." The judge added that the order "directs the violation of several of obligations imposed on USPS by Congress, including the exhaustive statutory definition of 'nonmailable matter,' which does not include ballot mail from unenrolled individuals, and USPS's obligation not to make 'any undue or unreasonable discrimination among users of the mails.'"
"The right to vote is a fundamental right, which the Constitution guarantees to all citizens," Talwani said.