The Supreme Court on Monday lifted a lower court’s injunction on President Trump’s executive order seeking to limit mail-in voting ahead of November’s midterm elections. Trump’s order directs the Department of Homeland Security to create state-by-state lists of eligible voters who are citizens. The U.S. Postal Service would then use the lists provided by states to assess whether voters should be allowed to vote by mail. Justices ruled 6 to 3 that California and 22 other states lacked standing to sue over the issue. The ruling, however, did not address whether Trump had authority to impose the rules. A separate nationwide injunction against parts of the same order remains in place. “This leads to a lot of uncertainty going into the midterms, because the Trump executive order would radically restrict vote by mail,” says Ari Berman, the national voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones. If the ruling goes into effect, “it could disenfranchise millions of voters in November.” “If voting proceeds based on these DHS lists,” adds Berman, “it’s going to be inaccurate, it’s going to be unconstitutional, and a lot of legitimate American voters are going to be wrongly labeled as noncitizens and unable to vote — either based on shoddy data or an intentional attempt by the Trump administration to prevent people from voting.”

With the midterm elections less than 10 weeks away, the Supreme Court has lifted a lower court injunction on President Trump’s executive order seeking to limit mail-in voting ahead of the midterms. Trump’s order directed the Department of Homeland Security to create state-by-state lists of eligible voters who are citizens. The U.S. Postal Service would then use the lists provided by states to assess if voters should be allowed to vote by mail. On Monday, justices ruled 6 to 3 that California and 22 other states lacked standing to sue over the issue. The ruling, however, did not address whether Trump had authority to impose the rules.

The court’s three liberal justices dissented. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warned that the majority opinion “needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections.”

  • mkwt@lemmy.world
    22·
    6 hours ago

    The 6-3 SCOTUS ruling was in a lawsuit that challenged the exec order on its face. That is to say, the lawsuit was asking the federal courts to declare that the EO is illegal and void. The supreme court said just having an EO is too wishy washy to be an actual harm or injury that you can sue for.

    But… During the time of this litigation, the post office has finalized the new rules that implement the EO. So now there are rules on the books that actually do things that affect people… Actual harms that can be the basis of a new lawsuit.

    And that’s exactly what happened. The plaintiffs amended their complaint to challenge the rule instead of the EO, and they’re going to ask for their TRO and prelim injunction very shortly now.

    TLDR: the supreme court is once again finding the lamest and most legalistic reasons to hand this president small “victories” real fast, while they duck and dodge on saying anything about the real issues.

    • GardenGeek@europe.pub
      5·
      3 hours ago

      And it will suffice.

      The whole system is based on rules not being applied in time (for example you can’t undemolish a west wing, even if the court rules it was illegal afterwards). They create facts and thats the win they need no matter what some judge says afterwards.

      In this case they can mess with the voters and influence the maybe most important election of this century.