President Trump’s wide-reaching campaign to change election laws suffered another setback on Monday, when the Supreme Court blocked a crucial pathway to restricting mail-in voting practices that he has long blamed, without evidence, as central to his defeat in 2020.
The Supreme Court ruling upheld a Mississippi state law allowing mail ballots to be received up to five days after Election Day; it followed a federal court’s decision last week to strike down key parts of a Trump executive order that sought in part to empower the U.S. Postal Service to regulate mail voting.
The blows add to Mr. Trump’s already deepening frustration, as he has continued to fall short of muscling his primary voting legislation through Congress. The bill, which Republicans call the SAVE America Act, lacks the Democratic support it needs in the Senate to reach the 60 votes required for passage.
Mr. Trump has long harbored a particular hatred for voting by mail, casting unfounded aspersions about the process as far back as 2016. But his false claims that it was rife with fraud exploded after the 2020 election, when Democrats embraced the method en masse during the coronavirus pandemic, helping to power the election of Joseph R. Biden Jr. Since then, Mr. Trump has regularly declared his intentions to ban the practice, except for members of the military, a group whose votes tend to tilt toward Republicans.
But time and again, Mr. Trump has run into barriers in the Constitution, which grants no authority over elections to the executive branch.
The Supreme Court made note of this in its 5-4 opinion, in which Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined with the court’s three liberals.
“As Alexander Hamilton put it, the Constitution lodges power over congressional elections in state legislatures “primarily” and in Congress “ultimately,’’” the court found on Monday.
The decision is likely to renew Mr. Trump’s already aggressive push for Republicans in the Senate to change filibuster rules — the so-called nuclear option — to pass the SAVE America Act.
Mr. Trump has already exerted enormous pressure on Republicans in Congress to enact the SAVE America Act, which would require voters to prove their citizenship in person upon registering to vote, and also to present a government-issued photo ID at polling places. The bill also adds new ID restrictions to mail voting.
Last week, Mr. Trump refused to sign the first major bill to address the nation’s housing crisis in more than three decades, citing his vow to block all legislation until Congress moves on the voting bill.
He doubled down on his demands after the ruling.
“In light of the tremendous loss in the Supreme Court today concerning Voter’s Rights, and the fact that ‘people’s’ votes are allowed to be counted LONG AFTER an Election is over, it is more important than ever to pass THE SAVE AMERICA ACT,” Mr. Trump wrote Monday on social media.
Yet while the Supreme Court ruling frustrated the president, election administrators breathed a sigh of relief in the 18 states and territories across the country that currently allow for late-arriving ballots postmarked by Election Day.
Voters will see a reprieve, too. A review of voting records by The New York Times last year found that at least 725,000 ballots were postmarked by Election Day but arrived within the legal window afterward during the 2024 election. Voting advocates argued that, had the court ruled against Mississippi’s law, some ballots would have almost certainly been rejected as voters clamored to meet unfamiliar deadlines.
“Today’s Supreme Court decision on Watson v. R.N.C. reinforces the fundamental right to vote in the wake of the Trump Administration’s continued attacks on our democracy,” said State Senator Kristen Gonzalez, Democrat of New York and the chair of her chamber’s elections committee. “Mail-in voting is essential to keeping our elections accessible and allowing as many people as possible to participate in the democratic process.”
Despite the finality of a Supreme Court ruling, both Democrats and Republicans vowed that the fight over mail ballots, and election rules writ large, were far from over.
“If we want fair and secure elections, Election Day should mean exactly what it says, which is why this decision makes it even more imperative that Congress pass the SAVE America Act,” said Joe Gruters, the chairman of the Republican National Committee. He added, “Republicans are not going to be deterred by this decision, and the R.N.C. will keep fighting to have elections end on Election Day as Americans want.”
Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Democrat of Illinois, echoed a similar battle stance. Illinois is one of the states that allows mail ballots to arrive after Election Day.
“Donald Trump is using every weapon in his arsenal to attack our free and fair elections,” Mr. Pritzker said in a statement. “The Supreme Court ruled against him today on an asinine attempt to throw out a law that ensures mail ballots get counted, but his assault is not over. We cannot look away while the most corrupt president in history attempts to rewrite our election laws to serve his own interests.”
