The Supreme Court of the United States has given its approval this Monday to the attempt by the Administration of Donald Trump to push forward an executive order aimed at limiting who can cast their vote by mail before the midterm elections --the 'midterms'-- scheduled for next November.
With its well-known ideological division and asserting the conservative majority of six justices against three progressives, the high court has overturned a judicial order issued in June by a federal judge in Massachusetts. That ruling prevented essential points of the executive order from coming into effect this year in California and in 22 other states that had taken the measure to court.
At the same time, although certain sections of that same executive order remain suspended nationwide due to a subsequent ruling by the same judge Indira Talwani in a different proceeding, it is expected that the Supreme Court's ruling will also impact that litigation.
Thus, the Trump Administration is in a position to implement the questioned executive order, although the judicial battle will continue. This has been warned by the Attorney General of New York --one of the states that challenged the initiative--, Letitia James, who has stated on social media that the "painful setback" represented by the Supreme Court's decision "will not be the last word."
"The right to vote is sacred, and no government should be able to put it at risk. We are exploring our legal options," added the New York attorney.
The Supreme Court's own ruling emphasizes, in any case, the limited and temporary nature of its pronouncement: "The Court's resolution on this request does not imply that any measure adopted by the Government to implement the order is necessarily legal. In that sense, time will tell," indicates the ruling, which has been accessed by Europa Press.
TWO LIBERAL JUDGES ARGUE THEIR DISSENT
One of the two dissenting opinions issued by the judges of the liberal wing, the one signed by Judge Sonia Sotomayor, focuses precisely on this aspect. Sotomayor reproaches the majority that the decision "does not address whether the president's attempts to interfere in the state administration of the November 2026 elections are legal," nor "does it suggest that the Executive Branch has constitutional or legal authority to implement the president's directives."
"On the other hand, today's decision simply postpones the resolution of those challenges," laments the magistrate in her dissenting opinion, included --just like the second dissent-- in the very document of the ruling.
For her part, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson emphasizes in her own separate vote that the Supreme Court has adhered exclusively to the argument that the federal judge of Massachusetts, Indira Talwani, preempted by halting the application of the provisions in the 23 states before federal agencies had designed their execution plans.
In this regard, she accuses the conservative majority of "losing sight of the main objective" by focusing on a procedural issue instead of, in her opinion, the underlying purpose of the Trump Administration: "To obtain our support for their attempt to foment chaos before the November elections."