The Supreme Court has dismissed one of two lawsuits blocking the Trump administration from implementing changes to U.S. Postal Service regulations regarding mail-in ballots. The court ruled that states lacked standing because they could not prove that the regulations would cause “concrete harm.”
Background of the Case
California and 23 other states sued the federal government after a White House executive order directed USPS to begin creating “State Citizenship Lists” for each state, consisting of voters who, according to federal data, are eligible to receive mail-in ballots. The order states that the lists will be updated and transmitted to states 60 days before the election.
The order also includes a provision that “An individual’s identification on the State Citizenship List does not indicate that the individual has been properly registered to vote in the State” and that “there may be State laws, not reflected in the State Citizenship List, that preclude voter registration, or the individual may choose not to be registered.” This provision was thrown out by two federal courts, who found them unconstitutional and likely to result in the federal government intruding on the constitutional rights of states to run their elections.
Supreme Court Ruling
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority voted 6-3 to dismiss the lawsuit, saying that states have no standing to sue because “The Order is an internal directive from the President to his subordinates mandating that certain agencies pursue certain policies” and the order “neither requires nor forbids anything of anyone outside the executive branch.”
The majority argued that the claims of harm by states are, at this point, entirely speculative, and that “The true ‘source of any injury’ to the States would be the downstream action that the Secretary ‘might take in the future’ to implement” the USPS sections. The court emphasized that the section of the order is prefaced to say that the Secretary of Homeland Security will transmit the lists “to the extent feasible and consistent with applicable law.”
Directive to Department of Justice
Another section of the order directs the Department of Justice to prioritize investigation and prosecution of state and local election officials who “knowingly” allow instances of non-citizen voting. The majority argued that the DOJ directive was internal guidance that neither regulated states’ voter registration nor limited states’ authority to set their own election rules.
Since it only prioritized enforcement of existing laws, the court said it did “nothing” to states. The majority wrote, “The States lack standing to challenge for much the same reason: It does nothing to them.”
Dissenting Opinions
The three remaining liberal justices – Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Kentaji Brown Jackson – laid out their opposition to the ruling across two dissenting opinions. In one, Sotomayor and Kagan wrote that the majority’s decision “merely postpones adjudication” and does not address or rule in favor of the administration on many substantive constitutional questions.
Sotomayor also expressed incredulity at the majority’s view that the order’s sections on USPS state citizenship lists and directing DOJ to prosecute election officials were unrelated or nonthreatening. She wrote, “To pretend that the lists assembled [in one section] bear no relation to the prosecutions directed by [the second section] is to ignore the structure of the Executive Order and the Government’s words alike.”
Justice Jackson, in her own dissent, was even blunter. She wrote, “The District Court held that the President’s Order is unlawful, the Government does not defend the lawfulness of the Order before this Court, and no judge or Justice has held (or holds today) that the Order comports with the Constitution.”
Despite the ruling, the USPS regulations remain blocked under a separate injunction issued by a federal court in Massachusetts. The decision demonstrates significant differences between the Supreme Court majority and lower federal courts on the Trump administration’s efforts to assert more federal control over elections.
Source: CyberScoop