A federal judge in Massachusetts on Tuesday issued a setback to the Trump administration’s plans to issue sweeping new restrictions on mail-in balloting for November’s crucial midterm elections.
The ruling is not the final word in a complex and rapidly escalating legal fight over the president’s executive order that would bar the U.S. Postal Service from sending mail-in ballots to voters not on lists of citizens created by federal agencies.
A separate case challenging the order has already reached the Supreme Court, which for now cleared one legal hurdle that has blocked its implementation.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, an Obama administration nominee, found the Trump administration violated her earlier preliminary injunction blocking the executive order when it issued rules on how the Postal Service should implement it.
The rules were set to take effect Wednesday.
In June, Talwani sided with the League of Women Voters and other voting rights groups challenging the order, finding the president did not have the constitutional authority to alter how states administer elections.
After the new Postal Service rules were announced late Friday, the voting groups asked Talwani to intervene.
The Trump administration argued in court filings that it had not violated Talwani’s injunction because it stipulated it would not take any action to implement the rules for November’s election unless Talwani’s order was lifted.
“These arguments ignore the court’s explicit directive not to ‘initiat[e] or complet[e]’ rulemaking,” Talwani wrote Tuesday. “And Defendants cannot contend that they misunderstood the scope of the court’s order.”
Talwani’s order did not sanction the Trump administration for the violation, noting it would not change the legal posture of the case. She said her preliminary injunction had already blocked the implementation of the Postal Service rules.
The ruling comes the day after a divided Supreme Court decided 23 states and the District of Columbia had not met the legal bar to challenge the executive order in separate litigation.
In an unsigned order, the court’s conservatives agreed with administration arguments that it was too soon to take legal action because the Postal Service had yet to finalize the rules for implementing the order. The majority acknowledged additional legal wrangling is ahead.
“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,” the majority wrote. “On that score, time will tell.”
The court’s three liberals objected.
“This ruling violates well-established precedents concerning this Court’s equitable discretion and needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in a dissent.
Despite the adverse ruling, the states say they would continue the legal fight against Trump’s executive order. Ultimately, the legality of the order in one or both cases could end up before the Supreme Court again soon.
The legal action is playing out weeks before many states are set to begin sending out mail-in ballots for the November election that will determine control of the House and Senate.
Some state election officials have said it would be exceedingly difficult to implement major changes to mail-in balloting so close to the election and could cause voter confusion. Others have expressed concerns about qualified voters mistakenly being barred from casting ballots.
Trump issued the executive order in March, saying he was trying to prevent noncitizens from voting in elections. Trump has blamed his loss in the 2020 presidential election in part on unfounded claims that noncitizens cast large numbers of ballots.
Noncitizens have voted in some elections, but studies have found it to be rare.
The order requires states and the federal government to create lists showing who is eligible to receive mail ballots by relying on a federal database of citizenship.
Critics have questioned the use of the database, saying it is incomplete and outdated in some cases, which could create errors that remove eligible voters from the rolls.
Under the new rule, the Postal Service would also need to review and approve the designs of ballot envelopes for thousands of voting jurisdictions. The changes would include adding barcodes to envelopes to help thwart fraud.
The executive order is just one of a number of measures Trump has taken to restrict voting ahead of the midterms.
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