US judge extends ban on Trump’s new USPS mail-in voting rules ahead of November’s midterm elections | Today’s news

A federal judge on Friday extended a ban preventing President Donald Trump’s administration from implementing a new U.S. Postal Service rule that would tighten voting-by-mail requirements ahead of November’s congressional elections.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, based in Boston, issued the injunction at the behest of Democratic-led states and voting rights groups after one state mailed out election ballots on Friday. Talwani wrote that only laws passed by Congress can supersede state authority over elections, adding that “the executive branch has no inherent authority” over voting rules.

Congress has never delegated voting authority to the Postal Service, Talwani wrote, and the agency’s new rule “contradicts the statutory scheme of Congress and is unconstitutional.”

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The immediate deadlines required by the Postal Service’s rule would create “chaos” for groups providing information on how to vote, Talwani wrote. Organizations such as the League of Women Voters “do not know whether to advise their members to vote by mail, despite the legal right, because of the high risk of disenfranchisement,” its ruling said.

Management quickly filed an appeal.

The USPS declined to comment on the decision, but U.S. Postal Service Director General David Steiner defended the agency’s handling of the issue.

“We have always acted within our statutory authority to issue a rule to achieve these policies, but ultimately this issue will be decided by the courts and we will follow the court’s decision,” Steiner said Friday.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Postal Service’s rule follows Trump’s order

Under the rule, states must supply the USPS with lists of mail-in ballot recipients, and all outgoing and return ballot envelopes must carry unique barcodes. The USPS, under the rule, can refuse to deliver ballots that don’t meet the new standards or are associated with voters who don’t appear on the rolls.

Last week, Talwani, appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama, issued a 14-day temporary restraining order to prevent the USPS from enforcing the rule while it considered whether to issue a longer-term injunction.

On Thursday, the administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court to step in and strike down the temporary order so the rule could take effect. The court’s conservative 6-3 majority last week overturned a previous order issued by Talwani that prevented the USPS from imposing such restrictions.

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The USPS issued its rule to implement an executive order Trump signed in March after years in which the Republican president called for curbs on mail-in voting and pushed false claims that his 2020 presidential defeat to Democrat Joe Biden was the result of widespread voter fraud.

All 50 states allow some form of voting by mail. Of those, 29 states allow voters to request a mail-in ballot without giving a reason, and eight conduct their elections entirely by mail. North Carolina on Friday became the first state to mail out ballots for the November election.

If the rule goes into effect, it could force state election officials to try to overhaul their systems with the election just weeks away to accommodate a system USPS critics say is not ready to implement.

Talwani said it was “unlikely” that states would be able to comply with the rule for this year’s upcoming elections because it would require 10,000 voting jurisdictions to redo their ballots, print them and submit voter information to an online portal operated by the USPS, which does not yet exist.

“After considering this array of obstacles for officials against the backdrop of an upcoming election, and mindful of the fact that any minor disruption will result in the rejection of mail-in ballots, the court concludes that the disenfranchisement of members of plaintiff organizations, regardless of residency, is virtually inevitable,” she wrote, referring to the voting rights groups.

The administration asked a federal appeals court to overturn Talwani’s original injunction. However, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Boston, did not act on the request until the judge issued her final decision.