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The Trump administration won a victory at the Supreme Court last Monday in its campaign to overhaul mail voting before the midterms. By Thursday, though, much of the plan was blocked again. The speed of that reversal makes it tempting to see the latest ruling as a district judge thumbing her nose at the high court. But Judge Indira Talwani took the justices at their word.

The legal dispute began with President Donald Trump’s March executive order mandating the U.S. Postal Service to impose new requirements on mail ballots in federal elections. Among other things, Trump instructed the agency to develop rules requiring specially designed ballot envelopes with unique barcodes and state-specific lists identifying voters participating by mail, and to refuse to transmit ballots for voters absent from those lists. Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia sued, arguing that the president had seized authority the Constitution assigns to the states and Congress. Talwani agreed and issued an injunction, a court order barring the administration from implementing key provisions of Trump’s directive for the 2026 elections.

On Aug. 24, the Supreme Court put that injunction on hold, allowing the administration to move forward while the case continued. The six-justice majority left the legality of Trump’s plan for another day, concluding instead that the states had sued too soon. At the time they filed their complaint, USPS had yet to complete its rulemaking. A final regulation would come only after the agency proposed a rule, received public comments, considered them, and........

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