The U.S. Postal Service published a final rule on Aug. 21 that would restrict mail-in ballot delivery to states that share voter data with the federal government, carrying out part of President Trump’s March executive order on mail voting. But the rule cannot take effect for this year’s midterms because two separate federal court injunctions currently block it, and USPS acknowledged as much in the rule itself.
Voting rights groups have since filed an emergency motion arguing that USPS violated one of those injunctions simply by issuing a rule written to take effect immediately if the courts lift their orders, rather than setting an effective date safely after November. The dispute now sits with a federal judge in Boston while a related fight over the same executive order awaits action at the Supreme Court.
Background
Trump’s executive order directs the Department of Homeland Security and Social Security Administration to compile state-by-state lists of voting-age citizens, and separately directs USPS to build its own lists of approved mail voters and refuse ballots from anyone not on them. Two lawsuits followed. A coalition of 23 states and Washington, D.C. sued in April and won summary judgment in June from U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, who found key sections of the order unconstitutional and blocked them against those jurisdictions specifically. The 1st Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling 2-1 in late July.
A second lawsuit, brought separately by the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts and other nonpartisan voting groups, produced a broader result. On Aug. 11, Talwani issued a second injunction that bars USPS from enforcing the ballot-restriction provision anywhere in the country, not just in the states that sued. She wrote that “the executive branch has no authority to regulate elections.”
What Different Sides Are Saying
The administration and a group of Republican-led states have pushed back through the courts rather than through new legislation. Twelve GOP-led states intervened in early August to support the administration’s request that the Supreme Court pause Talwani’s injunctions. Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the justices in a filing that the district court had issued “an extraordinary injunction barring federal agencies from implementing” a policy meant to promote election integrity, and that it should not stand while the litigation continues.
Fact-check: a central part of the administration’s argument to the Supreme Court has been that the case is premature, since no agency had finalized how it would implement the order. USPS’s Aug. 21 final rule complicates that argument somewhat, since a completed rulemaking now exists on paper, even though USPS says it will not enforce it without court relief. Whether that changes the Supreme Court’s calculus is unresolved as of this writing.
The plaintiff states and voting rights groups argue the Constitution assigns election administration to states and Congress, not the president, and that the order’s compressed timeline was already causing problems for officials preparing for November. Fact-check: Talwani’s rulings, and the 1st Circuit’s decision not to stay them, both rest on that constitutional and administrative-law reasoning. Whether the Supreme Court ultimately agrees is a separate, still-open question; a lower court ruling in the challengers’ favor is not the same as a final resolution.
Note on Scope
The Supreme Court had not ruled on either emergency application as of publication. If the justices lift the injunctions, USPS’s new rule could take effect before the Nov. 3 elections; if they do not, current mail-voting procedures remain unchanged for this cycle.
Related Links
- What to Know About the USPS’s Rule for Mail-In Ballots – TIME
- Administration asks US Supreme Court to uphold sweeping Trump order restricting vote-by-mail – Portland Tribune
- States challenging executive order on mail-in voting ask justices to leave in place limits on its implementation – SCOTUSblog
- GOP states join Supreme Court fight to defend Trump mail-in voting restrictions – Courthouse News Service
- New court ruling makes it even less likely that Trump’s mail-voting rules will affect the midterms – Votebeat
- USPS pushes final rule on restricting mail voting forward – Democracy Docket
Discussion Questions
- Have you or someone you know voted by mail? What was that process like?
- Do you think the federal government should have any role in verifying state voter lists?
- Do you find the administration’s prematurity argument or the states’ constitutional argument more convincing?
- What matters more here: uniform national rules, or letting states run their own elections differently?
- How should courts weigh the risk of chaos close to an election against a policy’s underlying legal merits?
- Why do you think this dispute has moved through the courts instead of Congress?
- Should there be a general rule requiring election-related policies to be finalized well before an election year?
- How much should timing this close to the midterms affect how courts rule?
- What responsibility does USPS have when it’s caught between a presidential order and a court injunction?
- Imagine you are a Supreme Court justice deciding whether to pause this injunction. What would you weigh most heavily?
