A Trump-Appointed Judge Froze the Postal Service's Mail Ballot Rule at 3:30 A.M. Sunday. Ballots Are Already in the Mail in Three States, and the Supreme Court Is Weighing the Same Rule for a Third Time.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols wrote that the rule's key portions 'exceed any conception of the outer bounds' of the Postal Service's authority. It is the second injunction in eight days against a regulation whose voter portal still does not work.
The order came down at 3:30 a.m. Eastern on Sunday, Sept. 13, from a judge President Donald Trump put on the bench. U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols of Washington, D.C., issued a preliminary injunction barring the U.S. Postal Service from enforcing the mail ballot regulation it adopted on Aug. 21 at the president's direction, finding that the plaintiffs had shown the rule would likely cause valid ballots to go uncounted in the November midterm elections.
"Plaintiffs have demonstrated that, absent an injunction, there is an increased risk that a significant number of otherwise appropriate absentee or mail-in ballots will ultimately not be counted in the upcoming elections," Nichols wrote. "The public has a strong interest in ensuring that doesn't happen." On the legal question, he was blunter still: the rule's key portions "exceed any conception of the outer bounds" of the authority Congress gave the Postal Service, particularly its attempt to regulate how states run their elections and to build a federal database of mail voters.
The regulation does two main things. It requires every state's ballot envelope design to be pre-approved by the Postal Service before it can be used, and it requires election officials to upload identifying information about each mail ballot recipient to a new federal online portal before ballots go out. That portal was not operational when the rule was adopted, and according to court filings it still was not working when Nichols ruled. Election officials told the court that redesigning envelopes, waiting for federal sign-off and running an untested portal in the final weeks before an election was not merely burdensome but impossible, and that ballots and envelopes for this cycle had already been printed to the old specifications.
The timing is what makes the ruling matter. Mail ballots are already going out in Alabama, North Carolina and Wisconsin, and more states begin distribution this week. North Carolina started shipping on Sept. 5, the same day U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston froze the rule in a separate case. Nichols' injunction is broader than Talwani's, which blocked only certain provisions, and NBC News reported Monday that the fight is now heading to the Supreme Court for the third time this year.
The justices have already touched this case twice. Talwani first blocked Trump's underlying executive order in the spring, and in June issued an injunction; the Supreme Court lifted that block in August, ruling the challenge was premature because the Postal Service had not yet published its regulation. When the rule appeared on Aug. 21, the plaintiffs refiled in both Boston and Washington. Talwani froze it again in early September, and Solicitor General D. John Sauer went back to the Supreme Court, arguing that "states cannot choose to use federal mails ... then insist their election-related mail is exempt from the Postal Service's rulemaking authority." That emergency application was still pending when Nichols ruled.
The administration has framed the rule as a fraud-prevention measure and has said participation in the envelope and portal system is voluntary for states. But at the Boston hearing, the Postal Service could not name a single state that had opted in, and Talwani said of the government's declarations about how the system would work: "I don't have it. I have nothing." Trump has blamed mail voting for his 2020 loss to Joe Biden, a claim that has never been substantiated, and has used mail ballots himself.
Nichols' ruling means that even if the Supreme Court sides with the administration on Talwani's narrower order, a second, broader injunction from a different circuit would remain in place unless the justices or the D.C. Circuit lift it too. With ballots already moving through the mail, the practical window for the rule to take effect before Election Day is closing by the day.
Originally reported by NBC News.