A Donald Trump-appointed judge blocked the mail-in ballot rule issued by the U.S. Postal Service last month, asserting the USPS likely exceeded its authority.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols of the District of Columbia issued an opinion late Sunday night that found the Postal Service rule would “exceed any conception of the outer bounds” of the agency’s authority, and that it does not have a role in elections.
“Less than three weeks ago, the United States Postal Service adopted a Final Rule requiring that all absentee and mail-in ballots for federal elections—including for the elections occurring in less than sixty days—be transmitted only in envelopes satisfying new design requirements and be transmitted only to voters who are verified by the Postal Service to have been enrolled in a newly created ‘Federal Ballot Mail Portal,’” the judge’s 24-page opinion says. “As the government concedes, the Postal Service could issue (and enforce) the Rule only if Congress gave it the authority to do so, but here no statute grants the Postal Service the power to issue key parts of the rule.”
The opinion adds, “Plaintiffs have therefore demonstrated that they are likely to succeed on their claim that the issuance of the rule was ultra vires, and the record otherwise weighs in favor of preliminary injunctive relief.”
This marks the second injunction against the USPS final rule on mail-in ballots, in a matter destined to return to the Supreme Court before the 2026 midterm elections.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani of the District of Massachusetts issued an earlier preliminary injunction that was upheld by the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a case brought by Democrat-led states.
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Plaintiffs in the case before Nichols were the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the League of Latin American Citizens, and the NAACP.
The USPS rule requires states to enroll mail-in voters in a federal portal to verify their legal eligibility. It bases the mailing of ballots on compliance. It requires all mail-in ballots for federal elections to be transmitted in envelopes with new design requirements sent to voters verified as eligible by the Postal Service.
The judge continued, “Nothing in the Postal Reorganization Act authorizes the Postal Service to impose new election procedures on state election officials, to create a data collection system for mail-in and absentee voters, or to refuse the transmission of lawful mail because it fails to meet these data collection requirements.”
Nichols also found that the Trump administration did not demonstrate the rule would prevent fraud.
“On the other side of the ledger, the federal government does not point to any record evidence that there will be significant fraud in the upcoming elections in the event the Court enters preliminary injunctive relief,” the opinion says. “That’s perhaps not surprising, since the government’s position is that the final rule is just a ‘regulation of the U.S. mail, and a modest one at that.’”
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