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In an emergency filing, Solicitor General John Sauer urged the justices to issue an immediate administrative stay of U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani’s order, followed by a fuller stay while the administration’s appeal proceeds.

As Straight Arrow first reported on Friday, Talwani issued an injunction barring enforcement of the rules for the midterms while lawsuits continue. In her order, she said Congress had not delegated its Elections Clause power to the Postal Service and that the final rule conflicted with the statutory framework governing elections.

The dispute stems from President Donald Trump’s March executive order directing changes to mail voting procedures. The Postal Service rule would require states to use agency-approved ballot envelopes and provide voter information that could be matched to mailed ballots. Ballots that did not comply could be rejected or not delivered.

The court’s conservative justices found in an emergency opinion that the states sued too early and that the administration could proceed with planning for restrictions on mail-in ballot voting while a lower court weighs the legality of these new guidelines. 

The three justices in the court’s liberal minority said they would have kept the lower court’s hold in place, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson calling the majority’s ruling a “Kafkaesque nightmare.”

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