‘FLURRY OF INJUNCTIONS’: Scholar Breaks Down the Battle Over Mail-In Voting Restrictions

The fight over mail-in ballots is back in courts. A federal judge temporarily blocking the Postal Service from carrying out part of President Trump's election order, including a push to limit mail ballots to voters on a federal eligibility list. So let's bring in Fox News contributor Jonathan Turley, constitutional law attorney and professor at George Washington University. Always great to see you. Happy Friday. Thank you. Happy Friday. I'm getting questions from folks who say, wait a minute, didn't the Supreme Court do something on this a few days ago? But essentially what they said was the states had acted too quickly. The judge who had given them a temporary hold on this, it wasn't ripe yet. And then the Postal Service puts out this formal rule explaining how all of this is going to work. They go back to court. Now they've got to pause on this. The clock is ticking. What happens next? Well, that's exactly right. And they went back to the same judge that pulled the trigger again. And it'll go back to the Supreme Court. And this is part of the reason why the Supreme Court has used what's called the shadow docket that for many years, judges, frankly, and certainly litigants realized that if they could just get an injunction, they could run out an entire administration. They could stop a policy just because it takes so long to get to a final ruling by the Supreme Court. So the Supreme Court has increasingly used what's called the shadow docket, which allows them to render decisions much more quickly without oral argument. Many on the left are furious about that. But this is an example of why they're doing it, because you can game the system. So if you impose an injunction right now, the administration will simply run out of runway that these ballots have got to get out relatively soon in many states. And at some point, it becomes too late for a court to act. That's why the Supreme Court is using the shadow docket so much. Well, you know that many of the justices don't even like the name the shadow docket. They want to call it the emergency docket. Some of them feel like that's a little pejorative, but it is where a lot of these really big issues land because time is of the essence. We know that's one of the arguments against these changes because they say, as you said, some of these states are going to start mailing out mail-in ballots literally within days. There's no way to get all of this together. But here's what New York Attorney General Letitia James says about why the president's trying to do this. This is nothing more than an attempt to suppress the right to vote. Let's be clear. The United States Postal Service and the president of these United States does not have jurisdiction over the elections. It's states. OK, Jonathan, she's one of the states, New York's one of the states that has successfully at least gotten this pause. We know that the judge is going to have a hearing September 3rd. What do you think happens next? Well, first of all, you know, the president does have jurisdiction over things like the post office. And there is a federal aspect to elections. Yes, the states are given the primary responsibility over elections, but there is also counter positions or powers within the federal system. These are federal elections after all. So these are tough decisions that have to be made. And so the court's going to have to hash this out. My guess is you're going to see more of these challenges occurring in the next few days and weeks. And there will be a flurry of injunctions. The court will have to use that emergency docket if they're going to clear this away. So we're going to have a number of these hearings over the next few weeks. It'll move quickly before the Supreme Court. The odds favor that you can gum up the works and avoid this from being rolled out. I mean, if you're going to bet in Vegas, you'd have to bet with the challengers because the time is so tight now that it's going to be hard even with the emergency docket to get this fully hashed out. Yes. So what do you make of the state's arguments that the Constitution vests them with the power to handle these elections and not with the executive branch, at least as far as this direction with respect to the Postal Service? This is part of that tension that exists. There is no question that the states do have the primary role over elections, but the federal government also has a role. They also have a great deal of funding. They've tried to use that as well. This is the natural tension in our federalism system. And so we'll have to see how it hashes out. But the states obviously do have the front seat when it comes to elections. All right, Jonathan, always a pleasure to hear from you. Tap into a little bit of your massive legal brain. Have a great weekend. Thank you, Shannon. Be sure to like and subscribe for all the Fox News latest on YouTube and catch full shows streaming now on Fox One.