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The US Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for the Trump administration to proceed with sweeping new restrictions on mail-in voting, removing a major legal obstacle just weeks before states begin sending ballots for the 2026 midterm elections and prompting two of the high court’s liberal justices to warn that the ruling will sow “chaos and uncertainty.”

Contrary to social media posts from supporters of President Donald Trump, the court’s right-wing majority did not rule in Trump v. California that the president’s March executive order directing several federal agencies to change how elections are administered is constitutional. Instead, the justices concluded in the 6-3 unsigned order that the states challenging the order had not demonstrated sufficient standing to sue at this stage and stayed a lower court injunction blocking its implementation.

Monday’s ruling came after the justices’ June rejection of a Republican-backed challenge to state laws permitting election officials to count certain mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day.

“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 in Monday’s decision. “On that score, time will tell.”

That was little consolation to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who penned a dissent joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

New Poll Shows Strong Support for Proportional Representation Among Americans

“Today’s decision does not address whether the president’s attempts to interfere with states’ administration of the November 2026 elections are lawful,” Sotomayor wrote. Instead, the majority punted the matter even as states face a “concrete and imminent injury” from Trump’s executive order.

“This ruling violates well-established precedents concerning this court’s equitable discretion and needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections,” the dissenters asserted.

Trump and Republicans have used fearmongering disinformation to amplify the nearly nonexistent “threat” of voter fraud —........

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