Illinois’ Democratic leaders expressed trepidation Tuesday after the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to proceed with plans that could severely limit mail-in voting, raising warnings that it could create chaos for the Nov. 3 general election.

With the first day to vote by mail in Illinois less than a month away on Sept. 24, Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker called the ruling “deeply troubling,” while U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, said President Donald Trump’s executive order was another attempt by the president to “chip away at that fundamental right” to vote.

At issue was Monday’s ruling in which the nation’s highest court lifted, at least temporarily, a lower court’s stay of the executive order Trump issued earlier this year.

The order directs the Department of Homeland Security to create a list of adult U.S. citizens in each state and requires states to give the U.S. Postal Service a list of voters to whom they intend to send mail-in ballots. It also prevents the USPS from mailing ballots to people not on the agency list of “enrolled” voters. Another provision requires the U.S. attorney general to “prioritize” the investigation and prosecution of state and local officials who issue ballots to ineligible voters.

A separate federal court ruling, which the Supreme Court did not address, still prohibits the postal service from carrying out its part of the executive order. But the administration filed a motion late Monday asking that the second hold be lifted as well.

Illinois was one of 23 states as well as the District of Columbia that challenged Trump’s executive order, arguing it was an unconstitutional attempt by the federal government to interfere with election operations that are constitutionally delegated to the individual states.

But in the unsigned 6-3 ruling, the court’s majority said the states lacked standing at this point to challenge the executive order because it had not yet been implemented.

“The Court’s disposition of this application does not mean that any measure taken by the Government to implement the Order will necessarily be lawful. On that score, time will tell,” the majority opinion said. “But the Order itself does not harm the States, so the District Court lacked jurisdiction to bar the Government from trying to implement it.”

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Elena Kagan, acknowledged the decision “does not address whether the President’s attempts to interfere with States’ administration of the November 2026 elections are lawful. Nor does it suggest that the Executive Branch has any constitutional or statutory authority to implement the President’s directives. Instead, today’s decision merely postpones adjudication of those challenges.”

And in a separate dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the ruling “needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections.”

Illinois has resisted federal government attempts to obtain detailed personal voter information, and opponents of the executive order contend the Trump administration would use the data provision to prosecute state and local officials unwilling to provide the voter data to the Department of Homeland Security.

“We are weeks away from voting in the midterms and the President is trying to put fear in Americans about the security of our elections, rewrite the rules, and put the federal government between voters and their ballots,” Pritzker, who is seeking reelection and is considered a potential 2028 presidential contender, said in a statement.

“Illinois will continue to administer free and fair elections in our state while fighting every attack on voters’ rights,” said Pritzker, a vocal critic of Trump. “Instead of focusing on being president, Donald Trump aspires to be a king. In America, the people of this nation decide the outcome of their government.”

Durbin, who is retiring and not seeking reelection, said in a statement on Tuesday that Trump has been “undermining our democracy by making baseless claims about ‘rigged’ elections, demanding unreasonable voter registration requirements, restricting mail-in voting, and threatening to unconstitutionally nationalize our elections.”

The ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Durbin called the ruling “a temporary procedural win for President Trump as he attempts to pursue these lawless goals — but it doesn’t change the reality that the Constitution empowers states to run our elections, and the rule of law must prevail as this litigation continues.”

Trump has long falsely portrayed mail-in voting as rife with fraud and has blamed his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden on illegally cast votes by mail. He has repeatedly sought to vastly limit who can cast ballots by mail, though he himself regularly votes through the mail from Florida.

Roughly 30% of the ballots cast in the 2024 general election were submitted by mail, and Democrats have increasingly pursued vote-by-mail strategies, in contrast with Republicans. In Illinois, voters can request to have mail-in ballots sent to them permanently.

The League of Women Voters, which filed the separate suit challenging the postal service’s role in determining voter eligibility, noted that the federal court order in its case “remains in place, and we will fight to keep it that way or to secure new relief.”

“It is important to note that (Monday’s) ruling only addresses the timing of the state plaintiffs’ challenge. It does not affect any voters’ ability to cast a mail ballot. The Supreme Court did not rule on the merits of the executive order, and made clear: ‘If the Postal Service’s final rule harms the States, they may challenge that rule,’” the statement said.

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