Federal judge rules Trump administration violated injunction on mail ballots after Supreme Court order

Supreme Court emergency ruling

On Monday, a divided US Supreme Court issued an unsigned emergency order lifting one court freeze on President Donald Trump's executive order restricting mail-in voting. The court's conservative majority concluded that a lawsuit brought by 23 states and the District of Columbia was premature because the US Postal Service had not finalized its implementation regulations. The justices ruled that the states lacked legal standing because the alleged harm had not yet occurred, though they noted states could challenge the final rule later. The decision did not address the constitutional merits of the executive order, and the court did not decide whether the directive would be lawful once completed. The three liberal justices dissented, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson stating that the ruling injected confusion into the midterm elections.

Massachusetts court setback

On Tuesday, US District Judge Indira Talwani in Massachusetts issued a five-page order finding that the Trump administration violated an existing nationwide preliminary injunction. The administration published Postal Service regulations late on Friday that were scheduled to take effect on Wednesday. The League of Women Voters of Massachusetts asked the court to enforce its June injunction, which prohibited altering state-administered voting rules. The Justice Department argued that publishing the rule did not violate the injunction because the text specified the Postal Service would not enforce it while court orders remained active.

These arguments ignore the court's explicit directive not to 'initiat[e] or complet[e]' rulemaking.

Judge Talwani declined to issue sanctions against the administration, noting that her injunction already bars the Postal Service from altering mail-in ballot delivery before the November elections.

Executive order provisions

President Trump signed the executive order on 31 March, seeking to impose federal restrictions on mail-in ballots. The directive instructs the Department of Homeland Security to assemble state-by-state citizenship lists from federal databases to determine voter eligibility. It also directs the Postal Service to verify eligible voters and deliver ballots only in states that supply voter data to the federal government. Lawsuits filed by Democratic state attorneys general and voting rights organizations argue that the order represents an unconstitutional federal intrusion into state election administration. During court proceedings, government attorneys acknowledged that federal citizenship registries are imperfect.

Midterm calendar and state preparations

The conflicting rulings arrive as state election offices prepare to distribute ballots across the country. In states like Florida, where primaries took place on 18 August, Trump cast his own ballot by mail. Mail-in ballots for the November midterms are scheduled to begin dispatching to voters next week, roughly 60 days before election day. State election officials expressed concern over shifting rules during active election cycles. Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read noted that ballots for military personnel and overseas citizens will be mailed within weeks.

Now is not the time to make major changes to how elections are run in Oregon.

For now, voters retain existing mail-in balloting options because Judge Talwani's injunction remains in effect while multiple legal challenges proceed through the federal court system.