A federal judge said the U.S. Postal Service violated her injunction by completing a mail-in ballot rule while rulemaking was expressly barred, rejecting the agency’s argument that delaying its application until after the November midterms put it in compliance.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom.
A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the U.S. Postal Service violated a court order when it finalized a regulation affecting mail-in ballots despite an existing injunction prohibiting the agency from moving forward with the rulemaking process.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani sharply rejected the Postal Service’s contention that it had complied with her earlier order because the final regulation specifies that the contested provision will not apply to the upcoming November midterm elections.
USPS published the final rule last week while maintaining that doing so did not violate the injunction because implementation had effectively been postponed beyond the election.
Talwani concluded otherwise.
She said her order did not merely prevent the regulation from being enforced during the midterms. It expressly prohibited the government from beginning or finishing the rulemaking process while the stay remained in effect.
“These arguments ignore the court’s explicit directive not to ‘initiat[e] or complet[e]’ rulemaking,” Talwani wrote.
The judge also rejected any suggestion that federal officials could reasonably have misunderstood what her order required.
“And Defendants cannot contend that they misunderstood the scope of the court’s order,” Talwani wrote. “To the contrary, Defendants feigned complete compliance with the California v. Trump injunction in their July 27, 2026 request to the Supreme Court for an emergency stay in that case.”
Talwani did not impose sanctions or another formal penalty on USPS or the other defendants.
She did, however, formally find that the Postal Service had violated the injunction by completing the regulation while her order remained in force.
The dispute is unfolding alongside separate litigation over President Donald Trump’s executive action involving mail-in voting.
The Supreme Court recently lifted a different stay that had been imposed by a federal court in Washington, D.C., on Trump’s mail-ballot executive order.
That Supreme Court action did not eliminate Talwani’s separate injunction, however.
Her order remains in effect, leaving the Postal Service bound by the restrictions imposed in her case even as the administration gained relief from the nation’s highest court in the separate Washington litigation.
The distinction between the two cases has become central to the latest dispute.
USPS argued that its decision to publish the final regulation while withholding application of the challenged provision to the November midterms respected the practical purpose of Talwani’s order.
Talwani instead focused on its explicit language, finding that the injunction prohibited the government from moving ahead with the rulemaking itself, regardless of when the resulting regulation would ultimately be enforced.
The ruling therefore leaves the Postal Service with a formal judicial finding that it acted contrary to the court’s directive, although Talwani stopped short of imposing an immediate punishment.
The underlying litigation remains active as courts continue considering separate challenges involving the administration’s efforts to change rules governing mail-in ballots and the extent to which those changes can take effect around the November elections.
Original article
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