SCOTUS sides with Trump administration in mail

Justice Lewis Powell died on this day in 1998. During his time on the Supreme Court, Powell was considered a moderate, leaning “to the right on some key issues and to the left on others.” CNN recently described him as one of a series of justices who occupied a “pragmatic center.” At the Court On Monday, the Supreme Court granted the Trump administration’s request to allow it to move forward with implementation of President Donald Trump’s executive order on mail-in voting. For more on the decision, see the On Site section below. On Friday, Chief Justice John Roberts issued a temporary order, known as an administrative stay, allowing construction on the new White House ballroom to continue for now. Morning Reads Clarence Thomas thanks Cruz for defending him against ethics complaints Sophie Brams, The Hill Justice Clarence Thomas was the featured guest on Monday’s episode of Sen. Ted Cruz’s podcast, and during their conversation, Thomas thanked Cruz “for publicly defending him against ethics complaints in recent years,” according to The Hill. Cruz spoke out in support of Thomas after the justice faced criticism for not disclosing “gifts, luxury travel and property transactions involving billionaire and GOP mega-donor Harlan Crow” and for his wife’s “involvement in conservative political activity.” “You’re one of the people who actually stands up, particularly at times when others seem to wither, and I appreciate it,” Thomas told Cruz. “And more personally, when we, my wife and I, were under attack for obvious reasons, you and Mike Lee and some of the other friends would stand up. So I really appreciate that.” Court cuts $50M judgment against Alex Jones over falsely labeling Sandy Hook killings a hoax Jim Vertuno, Associated Press On Friday, the Texas Third Court of Appeals “slashed a $50 million judgment that conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was ordered to pay families of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre over his false claims that one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history was a hoax.” The court determined that, under “state laws that limit lawsuit damages,” Jones “can only be forced to pay about $6 million,” according to the Associated Press. “The ruling does not affect a separate $1.25 billion judgment against Jones in Connecticut, where he was also found liable for defaming and causing emotional distress to relatives of the 20 first-graders and six educators killed in the Newtown shooting.” Last year, Jones asked the Supreme Court to review that $1.25 billion judgment, but the justices denied his petition. On Friday, Jones said he will continue to challenge the now-$6 million Texas judgment, first by appealing to the state Supreme Court. Law firm Paul Weiss taps new Supreme Court practice head after Shanmugam exit Sara Merken, Reuters Attorney William Jay is moving from the law firm Goodwin to Paul Weiss, where he will “lead its Supreme Court and appellate litigation practice, filling the role after the group’s prominent head Kannon Shanmugam left for another firm earlier this year,” according to Reuters. Jay, “who has argued 19 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court,” was “at Goodwin for 14 years. He previously worked as an assistant to the Solicitor General. Earlier in his career he was a clerk to former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.” Defending the Supreme Court’s Legitimacy Brian J. Paul, National Review In a column for the National Review, Brian J. Paul reflected on the negative sentiment surrounding the Supreme Court today, sharing why he believes “the Court still deserves our confidence – and our defense.” “An independent judiciary was never designed to be popular in real time; it was designed to be a check that operates regardless of public sentiment,” Paul wrote, asserting that the Supreme Court’s “legitimacy comes from how it decides, not what it decides.” He continued, “The Supreme Court does not need our political leaders to agree with every decision it hands down – it needs them to defend the process that makes those decisions binding at all.” Irreparable Harm, “Administrative” Stays, and the White House Ballroom Steve Vladeck, One First In a post for his Substack, Steve Vladeck highlighted Chief Justice John Roberts’s “one-sentence administrative stay keeping Judge Richard Leon’s injunction against above-ground construction of the new White House ballroom on hold ‘pending further order’ of the Chief Justice or the Court.” Vladeck contended that “no defensible explanation for” the administrative stay exists, because “the justices have never publicly identified any criteria for an ‘administrative’ stay, as opposed to a stay pending appeal.” “You will not find, anywhere in the Supreme Court’s Rules or in any published opinions, a definition of an administrative stay, a standard for granting one, a cap on how long one may last, or a rule about who gets to decide,” he noted. Vladeck called on the justices “to publicly articulate criteria for when they should (and shouldn’t) issue ‘administrative’ stays.” On Site Supreme Court allows Trump administration to move forward with order imposing restrictions on mail-in voting By Amy Howe The Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for the Trump administration to begin implementing an executive order, signed by President Donald Trump earlier this year, that imposes restrictions on mail-in voting. The court paused an injunction by a federal judge in Boston that had barred the federal government from applying provisions of that executive order in the November elections to 23 states (along with the District of Columbia) challenging their legality. The court’s three Democratic appointees dissented. The court’s clearly established problem By Daniel Harawa In his Civil Rights and Wrongs column, Daniel Harawa explored the portion of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 that “requires federal courts to defer to the state court’s ruling on the federal constitutional claim so long as it was not ‘contrary to ... clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court.’” “Thirty years after AEDPA’s enactment,” Harawa wrote, “what counts as ‘clearly established Federal law’ remains remarkably unclear.” There is no constitutional “right to privacy” By Steven Gow Calabresi In his Born Free and Equal column, Steven Gow Calabresi compared the historical roots of the idea that all are “born free and equal” to the comparatively weaker history of the concept of a right to privacy. “A substantial majority of the American people in 1791, 1868, and 2018 lived in states which had born free and equal clauses, but almost no Americans in 1791, 1868, or 2018 lived in states whose bills of rights guarantee a right to privacy,” Calabresi wrote. Joseph Schechter Today, as part of our Closer Look series on famous Supreme Court plaintiffs, we look at the Schechter brothers, the plaintiffs in the case A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corporation v. United States (the “sick chicken case”), in which the justices defied FDR and which is one of just two times in American history that the Supreme Court struck down a federal statute under the non-delegation doctrine. Joseph, Martin, Aaron, and Alex Schechter were four Jewish brothers who were born in Hungary between the late 1890s and early 1900s. Sometime in the early 20th century, the Schechter brothers immigrated to the United States from Hungary with their parents. As young men, they became notable figures in Brooklyn’s kosher food industry. Joseph ran the Schechter Poultry Corporation in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, and Martin, Aaron, and Alex owned A.L.A. Schechter Corporation in Farragut, Brooklyn. As slaughterhouse operators in the poultry industry (their last name, Schechter, means “slaughterer” in Yiddish), the brothers would purchase birds from sellers at West Washington Market in New York City, railroad depots around New York City, and occasionally Philadelphia. The birds would then be trucked to the Schechters’ poultry shops in Brooklyn. Upon purchase by customers, the birds would be immediately slaughtered by a schochtim, a kosher slaughterer employed by the Schechters. In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the National Industrial Recovery Act, a part of the New Deal that aimed to reduce competition. Violations could result in criminal charges. The Roosevelt administration believed too much competition was reducing prices, which then lowered wages and consumers’ purchasing power. The National Recovery Administration, created under the NIRA, thus instituted regulations aimed at increasing wages and stabilizing trade practices. Section 3 of the NIRA gave the president broad authority to set “codes of fair competition” and, under this authority, the Roosevelt administration promulgated the Live Poultry Code. One such rule under this code was for “straight killing,” requiring most purchasers to purchase either a coop or half coop of chickens rather than allowing them to pick out individual chickens. The Roosevelt administration believed that this rule would stabilize competition by preventing customers from selecting just the best chickens and leaving sellers with difficult-to-sell birds. A year after the NIRA was instituted, inspectors found numerous violations of the Live Poultry Code at the Schechters’ poultry shops. (The Roosevelt administration had targeted the poultry field because of alleged corruption in the industry.) The Schechter brothers and their businesses were indicted on more than 60 counts, including “sell[ing] for human consumption unfit poultry” and various violations of rules for selecting chickens. At trial, the Schechters were convicted on 19 counts. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit upheld every one of these but two. The Schechters then took their case to the Supreme Court and challenged the NIRA, particularly Section 3. They argued Congress had given, or “delegated,” too much of its lawmaking power to the president by giving him broad power to create such regulations. In 1935, in a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court struck down the NIRA, including Section 3, as an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power to the president. Additionally, the court struck down the NIRA on the basis that Congress had no power to pass the statute under the commerce clause since they were regulating businesses that were entirely intrastate. The Schechter brothers praised the court’s decision, stating through their lawyer that “[o]ur victory indicates that American justice does not permit persecution.” Roosevelt was not so pleased. He criticized the justices’ “horse-and-buggy” interpretation of the commerce clause. The decision is also believed to have contributed to his proposal to “pack” the court. Despite winning before the justices, Joseph Schechter ultimately regretted litigating the case given its significant financial cost to him: A 1935 New York Times article reported that Schechter owed $60,000 ($1.4 million in today’s money) in legal fees. (After the article ran in the Times, Schechter received donations from across the country, including from several business groups, but he never fully recovered his legal fees.) A Times article published on the one-year anniversary of the decision revealed that due to financial difficulties, A.L.A. Schechter Corporation had gone out of business. At the time of the article’s publication, Joseph was unemployed while Aaron and Alex ran a small poultry store and Martin worked at a chicken market. Later, Joseph Schechter was reported to have been working at “Schechter Poultry” into the late 1970s. Located in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, the store specialized in selling cooked chickens; by that time live poultry markets were a rarity. SCOTUS Quote JUSTICE KAGAN: “… I'll go back to this question. This is such a clear, explicit choice that was made about what it meant to – to have equal representation with respect to that area. And how you go from that being mandated to it being prohibited in the State context is something that I still can't quite work myself around.” MR. CONSOVOY: “Justice Harlan agreed with you. He did.” JUSTICE KAGAN: “That's a good person to be on the side of.” MR. CONSOVOY: “Yes.” (Laughter.) MR. CONSOVOY: “But his – his position was rejected 8-1 in Reynolds. …” — Evenwel v. Abbott (2015) Kelsey Dallas is SCOTUSblog's managing editor and the primary author of the SCOTUStoday newsletter. Blake Fox is an intern for SCOTUSblog. Recommended Citation: Kelsey Dallas & Blake Fox, SCOTUS sides with Trump administration in mail-in voting dispute , SCOTUSblog (Aug. 25, 2026, 9:00 AM), https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/08/scotus-sides-with-trump-administration-in-mail-in-voting-dispute/