Who's Still Suing Over Trump's Mail-Ballot Rule

The grounds were justiciability, not legality. As Talwani summarized it, the Court held that "[t]wo related doctrines of justiciability block[ed] the States' suit" — standing and ripeness. The states' pocketbook injury was too speculative, the Court said, because the USPS rule was still hypothetical when they amended their complaint: "The States cannot preemptively concretize their injury by expending funds before the Postal Service finalizes a rule."

Talwani noted one gap that matters for what comes next: the Supreme Court "has not yet had the opportunity to consider the sufficiency of Plaintiff Organizations' voting-confusion injury" — a different theory of harm from the states' fiscal and sovereignty claims.

She imposed nothing. Per Bloomberg Law, she wrote that there was "no remedy other than identifying the violation," reasoning that the injunction then in force already barred the rule from taking effect. Axios reported the same finding without sanctions.

The rule text itself contained a caveat that has now expired. Quoting it, Talwani noted USPS had said that "given the injunctions currently in place," it "will not take actions to implement the rule specifically for the 2026 election unless and until the government obtains relief from those injunctions." Both of those injunctions are now lifted.

Plaintiffs' supplemental complaint says USPS received more than 200,000 comments and "made no material changes" from its proposed rule, and that the final rule "tracks the Proposed Rule, which tracks Section 3 of the Order" — the mail-ballot section of Executive Order No. 14399.

North Carolina's State Board of Elections says voting in its 2026 election "officially begins on Sept. 4, with the initial sending of absentee ballots to voters who requested them." That is eight days after the rule's publication, and the first mail ballots of the cycle.

Nothing decided this week addressed whether the executive order or the rule is lawful. That question is still open in all three cases.