Supreme Court's USPS Ruling Shows the Institutional Center Held Against Election Subversion
Source: Richard L. Hasen. "Trump USPS ruling: the Supreme Court's conservatives and liberals finally say "no."." September 15, 2026. slate.com
The Gist
The author argues that even though the Supreme Court has generally been bad for voting rights, we should be relieved that both conservative and liberal justices came together to block a Trump administration postal rule that would have effectively disenfranchised millions of mail-in voters right before the midterms. The author sees this as a sign that the Court's 'center' still holds against blatant attempts at election subversion, even as only two justices (Alito and Thomas) sided with Trump.
Conclusion
Despite the Supreme Court's poor overall record on voting rights, its ruling blocking Trump's USPS mail-ballot rule should be celebrated because a cross-ideological majority refused to countenance mass voter disenfranchisement just weeks before the midterms.
Premises
- The USPS rule required strict bar-code matching and threatened to reject entire batches of ballots over minor errors, which would have disenfranchised millions of elderly, disabled, military, rural, and Native American voters who rely on mail-in voting
- The rule was administratively impossible to implement in time for the already-underway 2026 midterms, since ballots were already being mailed and USPS lacked a working voter-list portal even by the time of the ruling
- The federal district court found the rule exceeded USPS's legal authority and that the burdens on election administrators and voters outweighed the government's stated anti-fraud interest
- The government's Supreme Court brief failed to rebut the mass disenfranchisement argument, effectively conceding the point that swayed the majority
- A cross-ideological coalition of conservative and liberal justices agreed to block the rule, showing institutional consensus against election subversion, similar to the Court's earlier rejection of Trump's 2020 election challenge
- Only Justices Alito and Thomas dissented, and Alito's dissent ignored the interests of voters entirely, focusing instead on procedural blame and unsupported fraud claims
Assumptions
- That preventing administrative disenfranchisement of mail voters is a paramount value that should override asserted (even if unproven) government interests in fraud prevention
- That the Court's willingness to rule against Trump in this case is a meaningful indicator of institutional resilience rather than a narrow, case-specific outcome
- That the government's asserted fraud-prevention rationale was pretextual or exaggerated rather than a genuine policy concern
- That comparing this ruling to the Court's 2020 rejection of the Texas election lawsuit is an apt analogy for assessing the Court's role in safeguarding elections