Supreme Court rejects Trump. Again. Still think it's rigged? | Opinion

On Sept. 14, the Supreme Court rejected President Donald Trump's mail-in voting executive order.

Trump's executive order asked the Department of Homeland Security, alongside the Social Security Administration, to assemble lists of eligible voting-age citizens, check those lists against the voter rolls of each state, and then use the U.S. Postal Service to refuse delivery of any ineligible ballots. Key parts of that executive order were blocked by a federal judge in Boston, and the Supreme Court left that injunction in place.

The Supreme Court has ruled against yet another of the president's signature policy proposals, and yet Americans will likely still maintain a warped, partisan view of the court. Those who take issue with the ruling should direct their frustration at Trump's attempts to bypass Congress.

Supreme Court once again proves it isn't in Trump's pocket

This decision gave us very little in the way of a majority opinion – just a brief, unsigned order and a one-page concurrence from Justice Brett Kavanaugh – but we do know that four of the six conservative justices voted against the Trump administration.

The court's brief, unsigned order stated simply that "the Government is unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge to the District Court's preliminary injunction."

Justice Kavanaugh concurred but wrote separately that there is "at least a fair prospect that the final rule falls within the Postal Service's statutory authority." He added that "applying the rule in the 2026 elections would be arbitrary and capricious in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act because state and local election officials do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before the elections."

Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, disagreed, arguing in an eight-page dissent that some of the challengers lacked standing to sue, and that the "remainder are pursuing a claim that this Court has recently called a ‘Hail Mary pass' that ‘rarely succeeds.' "

Nevertheless, seven of the nine justices saw so little evidence that the administration would succeed on the merits that they denied the petition. My question now is whether this will be remembered as another instance of the Supreme Court standing against the president's signature policies, or simply brushed aside when critics want to call the court partisan.

Even after the justices struck down the president's tariff regime and his executive order reinterpreting birthright citizenship, a staggering 77% of Democrats still believe that the court "rules for Trump almost always or most of the time." Yet on his highest-priority issues – tariffs, immigration and now election security – the court has routinely stood up to Trump's schemes.

On the other side of the aisle, Republicans have an equally warped view of some of the court's rulings. Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett have been no strangers to criticism from the president himself, who has singled them out by name since the tariff ruling in February.

The president makes things worse with his rhetoric. "The Supreme Court has really let our Country down," Trump said in a Truth Social post on Sept. 15. "Certain Justices are petrified of these crazed and depraved Democrats, and are totally unable to show the courage necessary to save our America."

Barrett in particular has seen her standing with Republicans erode across multiple rulings against the administration; her favorability among the GOP has dropped 7 percentage points from January to July.

Despite the conservative justices' staunch records on other conservative priorities, "disloyalty" to the president has cost them ground with his base. Unfortunately, the vast majority of American partisans have a distorted view of the Supreme Court, particularly of the conservative justices most often in the majority.

Merits of Trump's executive order are irrelevant – making laws belong with Congress

Election security is a perfectly valid issue to target. Trump and his supporters exaggerate by several orders of magnitude the prevalence of fraudulent ballots, but there is no good reason to oppose policies that demand only U.S. citizens vote in our elections.

Whether we should be shifting so much power over state election operations to the federal government is another question, and a much more difficult one.

The merits of Trump's policy are irrelevant, however. The problem is that the president attempts to accomplish his desired policy outcome by the stroke of his pen, rather than leaving the matter to Congress.

Election operations are broadly left to the states, subject to congressional lawmaking. The executive branch has very little it can do by itself in the realm of regulating elections. Trump's scheme was to use the Postal Service to force state compliance with executive-branch election regulations – a clear conflict with the Constitution's separation of powers.

Once again, the Supreme Court is forced to step in because the president has tried to accomplish something under Congress' purview by his will alone. The American people's partisan view of the Supreme Court is warped by the fact that it is continuously asked to weigh in on policies that belong in Congress' hands, not the president's.

Dace Potas, a law student, is an opinion columnist for USA TODAY. Follow him on X: @DacePotas

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Supreme Court rejects Trump. Again. Still think it's rigged? | Opinion

Reporting by Dace Potas, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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This story was originally published September 15, 2026 at 9:50 AM.