The Supreme Court sided against Republicans on Monday to allow mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day to be counted if they are postmarked by Election Day.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the opinion for a 5-4 court, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the three Democratic appointees, over dissent from Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

Barrett’s opinion rejected a GOP challenge to a Mississippi law that implicated other states’ laws too. The Trump appointee said that federal law requires the electorate’s choice to be made on Election Day. Those laws are satisfied, she said, so long as Election Day is the deadline for people to vote, as it is in Mississippi. Federal statutes, however, do not set a deadline for ballot receipt, Barrett wrote, so they do not prevent states from counting ballots postmarked by Election Day but received afterward.

According to the Voting Rights Lab, 30 states have mail-in ballot grace periods for at least some voters: 14 states and Washington, D.C., have them for all mail-in ballots, while 16 more states have them specifically for military and overseas voters.

In his dissent, Alito argued that accepting late-arriving ballots “effectively postpones the date on which the electorate’s choice is made, and federal law precludes that postponement.” He said the majority was operating under a “flawed understanding of the election-day statutes,” and that the ruling “creates a serious risk of further undermining public confidence in our elections and our system of self-government.”

President Donald Trump called Monday’s decision a “tremendous loss” and urged Congress to pass the Save America Act, a stalled bill that the president said would require voters to show photo identification and proof of citizenship while disallowing mail-in ballots except for illness, disability, military deployment or travel.“There can be no more excuses!” the president wrote in a post on Truth Social.

A federal appellate panel of three judges — all Trump appointees — had backed the GOP’s challenge to a Mississippi law that permits ballots received up to five days after Election Day if they’re postmarked by Election Day. In its 2024 ruling, the panel reasoned that the state law was pre-empted by federal law, which the panel read to require ballots to be not only cast but also received by Election Day.

Last year, the full appeals court that covers Mississippi declined to rehear the case, over dissent from judges who argued that the panel’s ruling conflicted with the nation’s federalism tradition that gives states discretion to regulate elections. “Simply stated, federal law does not mandate that ballots be received by state officials before Election Day’s conclusion, and the panel’s contrary holding is erroneous,” the dissenting judges argued.

The state then appealed to the Supreme Court, which agreed to review the issue.

The Trump administration supported the GOP’s challenge, as Trump has railed against mail-in ballots while making unproven voter fraud claims. At the March hearing, Mississippi’s lawyer said the federal government has “sounded the anti-fraud theme” but couldn’t show  “a single example of fraud from post-Election Day ballot receipt in this century.”

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

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