A federal judge in Massachusetts found that the Trump administration violated her order that barred the government from moving forward with certain restrictions on mail-in voting. Yet even though she did not impose a remedy for that violation, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani said it may ultimately benefit the voting rights plaintiffs who brought the case, because the violative government action makes it ripe to sue over.
Tuesday’s ruling from Talwani comes after the Supreme Court’s ruling Monday in a separate but related case. In that high court ruling, the court’s GOP-appointed majority handed President Donald Trump a preliminary win that didn’t fully resolve his administration’s ballot authority over the midterms. It was more of a procedural ruling that said the challenge to Trump’s executive order came too early, and so the issue could soon return to the justices for a more definitive resolution.
Monday’s Supreme Court ruling lifted an injunction that Talwani had issued in a case brought by blue states that challenged Trump’s executive order. Her ruling on Tuesday came in a separate but related case brought by voting rights groups, in which she had also issued an injunction against Trump’s order, finding that it was “causing confusion and threatening both increasing chaos and an erosion of trust in our democracy.”
Before the justices ruled Monday in the states’ case, the voting rights groups told Talwani that the administration had flouted her injunction in their case by posting a “final rule” on Friday that would impose new mail ballot requirements for the midterms. They asked Talwani to issue a new order enforcing her injunction against the administration before the new rule is set to take effect on Wednesday.
The administration said that Monday’s Supreme Court ruling should lead Talwani both to decline to enforce her injunction against the administration and to reconsider the injunction itself. That is, the administration argued that her injunction in the voting rights groups’ case should fall for the same reason that the justices lifted her injunction in the states’ case. On that note, the administration brought its own emergency motion to the judge asking her to lift her injunction, and it told her that it is prepared to seek further relief in the appeals court if she declined to do so.
That put two opposing emergency motions in front of Talwani on Tuesday: the voting rights groups’ motion to enforce her injunction, and the administration’s motion to reconsider the injunction. In her ruling on the former, she said she would address the latter in a separate order.
The administration told the Obama appointee that the latest word from the justices “leaves no room for any further dispute: this Court lacked jurisdiction to issue the preliminary-injunction in this case [brought by voting rights groups], just as it lacked jurisdiction to enter summary judgment in the California case [brought by states], because there is no justiciable controversy over a proposed rule until it is actually finalized by an agency.”
The administration also said the Supreme Court “has made clear that this Court never had jurisdiction to issue the preliminary-injunction order in the first place, respectfully, this Court should not compound that error by issuing further relief to ‘enforce’ its prior, jurisdictionally defective order.”
Opposing the administration’s emergency motion, the voting rights groups noted that the government hadn’t even appealed Talwani’s injunction in their case. And they said the new Supreme Court ruling in the states’ case doesn’t resolve their litigation because the justices were considering a preliminary challenge, whereas in the voting rights groups’ case they are now dealing with a final agency action via Friday’s Postal Service rule. The voting rights groups added that they are moving to file a supplemental complaint challenging that final rule, which could wind up being another avenue through which this litigation moves forward.
Talwani wrote on Tuesday that the government’s “violation of the court’s order may ultimately inure to Plaintiffs’ benefit, where, now that a Final Rule has issued despite the pendency of the injunction, Plaintiffs could choose to file an amended complaint” while “noting that the issuance of a Final Rule is no longer hypothetical.”
Whatever Talwani decides on any amended complaint or the administration’s emergency motion, the Supreme Court could have the last word on how all of this litigation is resolved.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
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