A federal judge in Massachusetts has blocked the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) from enforcing a set of sweeping new mail-voting restrictions, marking a significant victory for voting rights groups just 60 days before the midterm elections.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani issued a preliminary injunction on Friday, ruling that the agency’s new requirements—which stem from a March executive order signed by President Donald Trump—are unconstitutional and unsupported by federal law. The ruling prevents the USPS from forcing states to comply with the new mandates, which critics warned could lead to the disenfranchisement of millions of voters.
“Unauthorized by the Elections Clause, the Final Rule clashes with Congress’s statutory scheme, and is unconstitutional where it intrudes not only on Congress’s Elections Clause powers but also that power left to the States,” wrote Talwani, an appointee of former President Barack Obama.
The legal challenge was brought by a coalition of voting rights organizations, led by the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts, alongside attorneys general from 24 states and the District of Columbia. The contested USPS rule would have required states to submit lists of all voters who requested mail-in ballots and mandated specific, complex design changes for ballot envelopes—including unique barcodes for tracking.
In her 49-page opinion, Talwani emphasized the lack of evidence presented by the government to justify the sudden implementation of these rules. While the Department of Justice (DOJ) argued the measures were intended to standardize election mail and prevent noncitizen voting, the judge noted the record contained no evidence of widespread fraudulent mail voting to support such a “rushed” and restrictive policy.
“In balancing the harms… the court finds that immediate implementation of the Final Rule threatens disenfranchisement of millions of United States citizens who seek to vote by mail,” Talwani wrote. She added that because any minor malfunction under the new system would result in the denial of a ballot, the disenfranchisement of voters appeared “practically inevitable.”
The ruling provides immediate relief to election officials who have been scrambling to prepare for November. Earlier this week, during a pivotal hearing in Boston, the DOJ failed to provide clear information on the USPS’s technical readiness to handle the new protocols. The agency’s own filings admitted they only “anticipated” being ready by next week, failing to address whistleblower warnings that the new system could lead to “catastrophic failure.”
The Department of Justice is expected to appeal the ruling to the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals. The government previously saw success at the Supreme Court when the justices lifted an earlier, less formal injunction against the executive order on the grounds that it was premature. However, with the USPS having since finalized the rule, the legal landscape has shifted, leading to this more robust injunction.
While the order blocks the mandatory application of the rules, it allows states to voluntarily comply with the new USPS requirements if they choose. Talwani explicitly rejected a request from a group of Republican attorneys general to exempt their states from the injunction, which would have allowed the USPS to refuse to deliver ballots in non-compliant jurisdictions.
As the legal battle heads toward the appeals courts, the status of mail-in ballots across the country remains in flux. For now, however, the court’s intervention has cleared a significant hurdle for voters planning to cast their ballots by mail this fall.
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