The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 on Monday to uphold a Mississippi law that allows mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted if they arrive within five business days afterward, rejecting a challenge brought by the Republican National Committee and handing a win to the 14 states that maintain similar grace periods.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the 22-page majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the Court's three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Justice Samuel Alito authored the dissent, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch. Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined most of Alito's opinion.
The decision reverses the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which had ruled that federal law requires all ballots to be received by Election Day. It arrives just over four months before the 2026 midterm elections, leaving intact the ballot-receipt rules in more than a dozen states.
The case, Watson v. Republican National Committee, turned on a deceptively simple question: do the federal statutes establishing a national Election Day set a deadline for when voters must cast their ballots, or for when election officials must have those ballots in hand?
Barrett framed it as, in her words, "a narrow one about timing", specifically, "whether counting ballots postmarked by election day, but received up to five days later, violates the federal election-day statutes."
Her answer was no. Barrett wrote that the federal election-day statutes govern when voters must act, not when ballots must physically arrive at an election office:
"The election-day statutes require the electorate's choice to be made on election day. That occurs so long as election day is the deadline for individuals to vote, as it is in Mississippi. But the election-day statutes do not set a deadline for ballot receipt, so they do not prevent Mississippi from counting ballots postmarked before election day yet received afterward."
That distinction, between casting a vote and delivering a ballot, is the crux of the ruling. And it is the point on which conservatives are most sharply divided.
Mississippi passed the law in question in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, to accommodate a surge in mail-in voting. The RNC, the Mississippi Republican Party, a Mississippi voter, and a county election official filed a federal challenge in Gulfport, Mississippi. A few weeks later, the Libertarian Party of Mississippi filed a similar suit, and the two cases were combined.
Senior U.S. District Judge Louis Guirola, Jr. upheld the law, concluding that the concerns Congress had in mind when it established a uniform Election Day were not implicated by a short grace period for mailed ballots. As Guirola put it: "Neither of those concerns is raised by allowing a reasonable interval for ballots cast and postmarked by election day to arrive by mail."
The 5th Circuit reversed, holding that federal law requires all ballots to be received by Election Day. Mississippi asked for rehearing, but the appeals court denied that request, though five judges dissented from the denial. The Supreme Court agreed in November to take up the case.
Barrett's majority opinion dealt with the challengers' strongest argument head-on. The RNC and its allies pointed out that when Congress first set a national Election Day in 1845, all voting was done in person. Two of the three federal election-day statutes were enacted at a time when mail-in voting did not exist. The challengers argued that "election" historically meant all ballots had to be collected on that single day.
Barrett was unconvinced. She wrote that the challengers' position amounted to a claim that "because we are governed by 19th-century election-day laws, we are also governed by 19th-century voting practices." Carried to its logical conclusion, she warned, that theory "would call into question the way modern elections work", "because in the 19th century, the polls were open only on election day itself."
That would threaten early voting, too. Barrett noted that the challengers did not press that far, but she was unwilling to adopt a reading of the statute that logically led there.
Barrett also pointed to federal law requiring states to allow military and overseas voters to cast absentee ballots in federal elections. That law, she wrote, "presupposes that the deadline for ballot receipt is uniformly a matter of state law." If federal election-day statutes already required all ballots in hand by Election Day, the military absentee provision "would make little sense."
She closed the majority opinion with a line that will frustrate some on the right and reassure others. Barrett acknowledged that reasonable people can disagree about whether late-arriving ballots are good policy, but said the Court's job is limited:
"The question today is not whether requiring ballots to be received by election day is a good or bad idea; the question is whether the idea has made its way into the United States Code."
She concluded it had not, calling the policy arguments on both sides ones that "are properly directed to legislatures."
Barrett has drawn conservative frustration before. The President publicly called out both Barrett and Justice Gorsuch after a separate Supreme Court ruling went against the administration earlier this term.
Justice Alito's dissent rested on a different reading of history. He argued that the original public meaning of holding an "election" on a particular day included completing the collection of all ballots on that day, not just requiring voters to act by then.
"From this Nation's founding until the last few decades of the 20th century, a period that spans the enactment of all three election-day statutes, having an 'election' on a particular day meant completing ballot collection on that day."
Alito was careful to note that the challengers were not trying to abolish mail voting or early voting. He acknowledged that "[b]oth voting by mail and early voting have become popular," and that the plaintiffs "do not dispute the lawfulness of these modern practices."
His argument was narrower: "under federal law, the electorate's collective choice must still be authoritatively expressed on election day." That requirement, Alito wrote, "is met in a jurisdiction with mail voting or early voting provided that the critical act occurs on election day: the completion of the collection of the ballots that embody the electorate's collective choice."
In other words, voters can mail their ballots early, but the ballots must arrive by Election Day, not drift in over the following week. "That is what took place when all voting was done in person," Alito wrote, "and compliance with the election-day statutes demands that the same occur in a modern election."
The dissent reflects a view held by many conservatives: that Election Day should be a firm deadline, not a soft target. The Washington Examiner reported that the Honest Elections Project's Jason Snead had described the case as "a good opportunity for the Supreme Court to hit the reset button on state laws that have extended ballot receipt deadlines beyond Election Day." The Court declined that opportunity.
The ruling's immediate effect extends well beyond Mississippi. AP News reported that 14 states maintain grace periods for receiving mail ballots after Election Day, including California, Illinois, and New York. Had the Court ruled the other way, those states would have faced a scramble to rewrite their election procedures months before the 2026 midterms.
During oral arguments, Just The News noted that 19 states and Washington, D.C., had filed a brief arguing that "states have the constitutional authority to make individualized judgments on how best to receive and count votes in federal elections." Illinois allows mail ballots to arrive up to 14 days after Election Day, far longer than Mississippi's five-day window.
The 5-4 split has become a recurring feature of this Supreme Court term, with justices crossing expected ideological lines on several major cases. This ruling's alignment, Barrett and Roberts joining the three liberal justices, will be studied closely by court-watchers and election lawyers alike.
The RNC's brief had argued the point cleanly: "When Congress designated a single day for the election, it set a deadline. If a state law extends the election after that deadline, it conflicts with Congress's timing decision and to that extent is void." Five justices disagreed.
Barrett's opinion does not endorse late-arriving ballots as good policy. It does not prevent Congress from passing a law that explicitly requires all ballots to be received by Election Day. And it does not strip states of the power to tighten their own deadlines.
What it does is leave the question where Barrett says it belongs: with elected legislators, not federal judges. That is a defensible position in the abstract. But it offers cold comfort to conservatives who watched state after state loosen ballot-receipt rules during the pandemic and hoped the Court would draw a bright constitutional line.
The internal dynamics of this Court continue to defy easy prediction. Justice Jackson's recent streak of solo dissents underscored how fluid the alliances have become, and this case is another example. The majority here is not a natural coalition, it is a product of Barrett's textualist reading overriding the policy instincts of many on the right.
Massachusetts Secretary of State Bill Galvin, a Democrat, told AP News after the ruling: "What's troubling was that so many of the other justices were willing to sacrifice the rights of voters." That framing overstates the dissent's position, Alito explicitly accepted the legality of mail-in and early voting, but it signals how the left intends to weaponize the 5-4 margin.
The Court's willingness to overturn precedent on other questions this term makes the restraint here all the more notable. Barrett could have gone the other way. She chose not to.
For Republicans who believe Election Day should mean Election Day, not Election Week, the remedy is now legislative, not judicial. Congress can pass a statute requiring all ballots to be received by the close of polls. Barrett all but invited it.
Whether that happens depends on whether Republican leaders in Congress consider it a priority. The RNC brought this fight to the Court and lost. The question now is whether the party will bring it to the floor.
If conservatives want a firm ballot-receipt deadline written into federal law, they have the roadmap. What they no longer have is a shortcut through the courts.
