A federal appeals court refused Thursday to revive new U.S. Postal Service requirements for mail ballots, leaving a preliminary injunction in place as the Trump administration continues seeking emergency relief from the Supreme Court.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom.
A federal appeals court on Thursday rejected the Trump administration’s attempt to reinstate new mail-ballot requirements ahead of the November midterms, leaving in place a lower-court injunction as the Justice Department separately presses the U.S. Supreme Court to allow the rules to take effect.
The First Circuit ruling warned that implementing the U.S. Postal Service requirements so close to the election could create significant logistical problems for states and potentially prevent eligible ballots from being counted. The three-judge panel consisted of Judges Gustavo A. Gelpí, Julie Rikelman and Seth Aframe.
“In this regard, the district court made detailed findings about the chaos and widespread disenfranchisement that would occur between now and November 3 should the Final Rule take immediate effect, including the fact that it would be impossible for some States to reprint compliant envelopes; the likely delays in the required USPS envelope review process; the lack of a presently operative portal; and the herculean task that would confront the USPS in scanning tens of millions of ballot envelopes and reviewing for a match with information in the presently non-operative portal,” the panel wrote.
The ruling represents another setback for the administration’s effort to implement the Postal Service regulations before Election Day. The requirements stem from President Donald Trump’s executive order addressing mail voting and would impose new standards involving ballot-envelope design and information states provide to the Postal Service.
Last Friday, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani issued a preliminary injunction blocking implementation of the rules, replacing a temporary restraining order she had granted the previous month. The ruling came as states were already moving into the ballot-distribution phase of the midterm election.
North Carolina began sending mail ballots Friday, increasing the administration’s argument that the Supreme Court should quickly resolve whether the Postal Service requirements can take effect.
On Sunday, Solicitor General D. John Sauer returned to the Supreme Court in a separate case and asked the justices to overturn Talwani’s preliminary injunction. Talwani has been assigned two separate lawsuits challenging Trump’s mail-ballot executive order.
The Justice Department had already sought emergency Supreme Court intervention the previous Thursday, asking the justices to lift Talwani’s temporary restraining order.
Sauer argued that the Postal Service has statutory authority to regulate the design and handling requirements for mail used to transmit election ballots. He characterized the changes as limited operational rules rather than federal regulation of state elections.
In his Supreme Court filing, Sauer said the Postal Service’s new rule “imposes only modest envelope-design and addressee-information requirements for federal-election ballots sent.”
“The Rule’s regulation of the U.S. Mail—not federal elections — is plainly constitutional,” Sauer wrote. “While the States have primary authority to regulate the manner of elections, they cannot choose to use the federal mails to carry out their elections but then insist that their election-related mail is somehow exempt from the Postal Service’s rulemaking authority, conferred by Congress, to regulate envelope design and addressee information.”
The administration argues that the regulations govern the federal mail system rather than the conduct of elections themselves. Opponents contend that imposing the requirements immediately before the midterms would force states to make extensive changes after election preparations are already underway and could result in ballots being rejected because of administrative or technical requirements.
The First Circuit focused heavily on those practical consequences in refusing to disturb Talwani’s injunction, pointing to states’ inability to redesign and reprint some ballot envelopes, anticipated delays in Postal Service review procedures and the absence of a functioning online portal required under the new system.
The judges also cited the scale of the proposed Postal Service operation, which would involve scanning tens of millions of ballot envelopes and checking them against information submitted through the federal portal.
Thursday’s ruling leaves the new requirements blocked while the Supreme Court considers the administration’s emergency requests. With mail ballots already being distributed in some states, the legal dispute has moved onto an increasingly compressed election timetable.
The dispute now places the Supreme Court at the center of the administration’s effort to implement the Postal Service rules before Nov. 3, while the First Circuit has concluded that immediately putting them into effect could create the “chaos and widespread disenfranchisement” identified by the district court.
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