A federal judge's order has added a new hurdle in President Donald Trump's race to take control of the midterm elections.
A divided Supreme Court ruled on Monday that 23 states and the District of Columbia had not met the legal bar to challenge the president's executive order restricting mail ballots, finding the underlying Postal Service rules were not yet final enough to sue over, but one day later U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani delivered a setback, reported the Washington Post.
The high court's conservative majority sided with the administration's argument that the case was premature, though the unsigned order stopped short of endorsing the policy itself.
"The Court's disposition of this application does not mean that any measure taken by the Government to implement the Order will necessarily be lawful," the majority wrote. "On that score, time will tell."
The court's three liberals dissented, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warning the ruling "needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections."
However, Talwani, who in June sided with the League of Women Voters and other voting rights groups in blocking Trump's order, found this week that the administration violated her preliminary injunction by issuing new Postal Service implementation rules — which had been set to take effect Wednesday.
The administration argued it had not technically violated the injunction because it stipulated the rules would not be enforced for November's election unless Talwani's order was lifted.
Talwani rejected that reasoning, writing that "these arguments ignore the court's explicit directive not to 'initiat[e] or complet[e]' rulemaking," and that the administration "cannot contend that they misunderstood the scope of the court's order." She did not impose sanctions, noting her injunction had already blocked the rules regardless.
The two rulings, issued a day apart in separate cases, leave the Trump administration in an awkward position – cleared of one procedural obstacle by the nation's highest court, but still bound by a lower-court injunction a judge says it already breached.
Both sides say the fight is far from over. The states behind the Supreme Court case say they will continue litigating, and the underlying dispute in one or both cases could return to the justices.
States are weeks away from mailing ballots for elections that will decide control of the House and Senate, and election officials have warned that implementing major changes this close to voting risks confusion and could mistakenly disqualify eligible voters.