The Trump administration on Sunday filed an emergency application with the Supreme Court seeking to enforce an executive order that requires states to verify the citizenship of voters before mailing federal ballots.
The order directs the U.S. Postal Service to confirm that recipients of mail-in ballots are U.S. citizens. It requires cross-referencing state voter rolls against databases maintained by the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration. States that refuse to comply risk losing federal election funding.
Nearly two dozen states and the District of Columbia sued shortly after the order was signed, arguing that it amounts to voter suppression. A federal judge in Massachusetts initially blocked the measure, later lifted the injunction, and then reimposed it following a divided decision by an appeals court.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the circuit justice for the First Circuit, declined to issue an immediate stay. She instead ordered the plaintiff states to file responses within seven days. The full Supreme Court will now consider the administration’s emergency application.
Administration officials maintain that citizenship verification is a basic election integrity safeguard. They said federal data requests have identified approximately 270,000 noncitizen registrations across four cooperating states. In New Jersey, officials found 6,600 noncitizens on the voter rolls, including about 400 who cast ballots in prior elections. Alaska has begun sending verification letters to flagged registrations and has identified roughly 3,000 cases requiring further review.
The administration argues that the executive branch possesses clear authority over how the Postal Service handles federal election mail. Six of the nine justices were appointed by Republican presidents. A decision is expected before large-scale distribution of ballots occurs in most states, where mail-in ballots are already being prepared and sent without the citizenship checks required by the order.
