A new U.S. Supreme Court opinion is complicating North Carolina’s plans to distribute mail-in ballots next week, for the 2026 midterm elections.
The court ruled Monday that a lawsuit seeking to block an executive order by President Donald Trump — filed by more than two dozen states, including North Carolina — was premature. That means Trump’s effort to crack down on mail-in voting ahead of this year’s elections can move forward, for now.
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Trump in March signed an executive order requiring states to submit data and lists that could be used to determine people’s citizenship status. He said the data would be used for the purposes of ensuring accurate voter rolls. But Trump has been unable to force states to hand over the data, so to encourage them to do so, he suggested ordering the U.S. Postal Service not to deliver mail-in ballots in states that don’t comply.
Monday’s high court ruling wasn’t a permanent win for Trump — just a temporary victory that allows his administration more time to craft and attempt to implement rules for a plan before allowing broader legal arguments on it.
Trump says the plan will improve election integrity. Critics of Trump’s plan say it’s an unconstitutional power-grab, taking election decision-making power away from state governments.
Monday’s court opinion won’t immediately block mail-in voting in North Carolina or in any other state. But it does leave the door open for such a result in the coming weeks. State elections officials say they’re monitoring developments in the case.
Election Day is almost two months away. That makes for a tight timeline for federal and state leaders, as well as the courts, to figure out how to handle the conflicting directions mail-in voting may or may not head this fall depending on the outcome of this legal battle.
The pressure is particularly acute in North Carolina, which sends out mail-in ballots before any other state in the nation. Unless ordered to do otherwise, the state plans to begin sending out ballots next week, on Sept. 4.
'We will do our best'
The possibility of ending mail-in voting in North Carolina over non-compliance with Trump’s order could affect thousands of voters. More than 1 million North Carolinians voted by mail in 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic discouraged many from going to cast a ballot in person. In 2024, about 300,000 North Carolinians voted by mail.
However, North Carolina has already complied with much of what Trump wants, and it could likely comply with the rest if necessary, according to elections officials who report to Republican State Auditor Dave Boliek.
Democratic Attorney General Jeff Jackson, who involved the state in the lawsuit, says the plan is unconstitutional regardless.
"North Carolina voters have many real reasons they may need to vote by mail – because they’re elderly or have disabilities, because they’re servicemembers stationed overseas, or because they’re recovering from natural disasters like Hurricane Helene," Jackson told WRAL in a written statement Tuesday. "Changing the rules at the last minute is chaotic, and the USPS has no legal authority to change how North Carolina runs its elections."
A spokesman for the North Carolina State Board of Elections told WRAL on Tuesday that the state’s election officials continue to monitor all the legal and administrative moving parts and had no comment on specifics of what might happen next.
“With so much left unresolved, we cannot comment on hypotheticals about what may or may not happen with the USPS and the executive order in the courts, as the situation is uncertain,” said Jason Tyson, a spokesman for the board. “We are discussing and preparing internally for any changes that might be necessary in the coming days or weeks. … If it becomes necessary, we will do our best to comply with any court decisions, as we always do.”
The court ruling on Monday highlighted a gap between Trump’s executive order and the federal government’s delayed execution of the order. Because the government hasn’t yet fully settled on how to carry out Trump’s plan, the court ruled, the state’s lawsuit was premature. “It is not a proposed rule, let alone a final rule,” the justices wrote.
The 6-3 ruling came down along party lines with the conservative justices siding with Trump and the liberal justices siding with the states.
In dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that it’s simply too late in the process to be having this fight. Even considering changing the rules for the elections, while voting is just about to start, she said, “needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections.”
Rick Su, a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law, said if people are confused by the Postal Service case and what it could mean for their ability to vote by mail, there could be a good reason: What the Trump administration is arguing in court is not the same as what Trump and his allies have been telling the general public about the case.
“To the public, what they're saying is because of this executive order, the U.S. Post Office is going to be the one that now decides who's going to get mail-in ballots. Not the states,” Su told WRAL. “... But to the courts, what they're really saying is, ‘Oh, we don't know if we're going to actually follow the order yet. We haven't actually drafted or proposed the order, so it's too early to tell.’”
The ruling doesn’t end the case. But even if Trump doesn’t ultimately end up winning in court, Su said, the president might still achieve his goals. If few people vote by mail due to the confusion surrounding the process, he said, it might not matter what the technical legal status of mail-in voting ends up being.
“The biggest concern is whether or not this just makes it difficult for everyone on the ground,” he said. “And maybe that's part of this process: Sort of eluding constitutional review while still getting some of the results the administration is looking for.”
For election officials in North Carolina, the fact that mail-in ballots are supposed to start going out in only a few days is likely creating “pure chaos” behind the scenes, Su said. “I do not want to be an election official right now, trying to decide exactly what I must do,” he added.
‘Trampled’ privacy rights
Trump has long made disproven claims of fraud in mail-in voting. He has continued to allege that widespread voter fraud has gone undetected for years and that stronger rules are needed to block supposed non-citizen voters.
Trump’s executive order in March told states to deliver lists of voters and other information to the federal government, as he has sought to centralize elections administration under the presidency.
Such a strategy is a steep departure from 250 years of American history, which have long seen elections run by local and state officials, not the federal government. That history is part of the basis of the lawsuit from North Carolina and the other states seeking to stop Trump’s plans..
Last month Trump threatened to withhold emergency response aid from states that didn’t comply with his order, leading to a separate lawsuit by North Carolina and other states. At issue in Monday’s ruling is his plan to possibly have the U.S. Postal Service — a federal agency run by Trump ally David Steiner — refuse to deliver any mail-in ballots in states that Trump deems not to have complied with his executive order on elections.
Earlier this summer a different federal judge issued a ruling in a separate case blocking the Trump administration from using the citizenship data whose collection method is the focus of the case before the Supreme Court. That ruling found the data could mistakenly lead to legitimate voters being purged and noted that people’s personal information isn’t supposed to all be collected in one place, anyway.
“All in all, the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote,” U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan wrote in that June ruling.