Cybersecurity Policy Report, Election Directive That Raised Privacy Concerns Remains Blocked After Supreme Court Ruling, (Sep 15, 2026)

By Tom Leithauser

The implementation of an election “integrity” executive order (EO) that had raised privacy concerns because it involved the use of data held by various federal agencies to create “citizenship lists” will remain blocked following a Supreme Court decision yesterday.

The high court declined to lift a district court injunction that barred the Trump administration from implementing the EO.

“The Government is unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge to the District Court’s preliminary injunction. And the equitable factors applicable for obtaining emergency relief from this Court do not favor a stay,” the Supreme Court said in an unsigned ruling on its emergency docket (United States Postal Service, et al., Applicants v. California, et al., No. 26A305 (U.S. Sept. 6, 2026)).

Last month, the Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration when it ruled that an injunction issued by the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts was premature because the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) hadn’t finished implementing the EO (CPR, Aug. 25).

Yesterday’s decision focused mainly on whether a rule enacted by USPS regarding mail-in ballots exceeded the authority of the postal service. While a majority of justices ruled that USPS exceeded its authority, three justices disagreed.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh concurred in the majority opinion, saying that the EO’s implementation would harm state and local election officials who lacked sufficient time to adjust their processes. But he said there was “at least a fair prospect that the final rule falls within the Postal Service’s statutory authority.”

Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented.

While the opinion and the dissents didn’t discuss the privacy implications of the EO, those concerns were front and center in earlier court challenges that claimed that the assembly of citizenship lists would violate the federal Privacy Act of 1974 and other state and federal privacy laws.

The citizenship lists that would be assembled under the EO would draw on data from the Social Security Administration, the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database, and “other relevant Federal databases.” The lists would have been used to determine whether an individual was eligible to receive a mail-in ballot delivered by USPS.

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