A federal judge in Massachusetts on Wednesday lifted the remaining block on President Donald Trump’s mail-in ballot executive order, a move that clears the way for the administration to restrict how states manage mail-in voting ahead of the midterm elections.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani lifted her order two days after the Supreme Court lifted a similar injunction in a related case following the government’s request to reconsider. Talwani’s order, which blocked a provision that limits who could receive mail ballots from the United States Postal Service, was the only remaining roadblock to implementing the executive order.
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that Talwani had prematurely blocked key provisions of the executive order, writing that her ruling was based on speculation as to a proposed rule. That order had blocked the Trump administration from compiling citizenship lists of eligible voters and directing the USPS to send mail ballots only to voters on those lists before the federal government had actually taken steps to do so.
In her ruling Wednesday, Talwani signaled she was only reversing course because of the Supreme Court. “The court finds it likely that the Supreme Court would apply the same reasoning here,” she wrote.
Talwani invoked Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent, quoting from it in a footnote. “If sowing chaos is the Government’s ultimate goal here, as it is here,” Jackson wrote, “the effectiveness of judicial review is substantially undercut when the Court shunts all consideration of the lawfulness of the Government’s conduct at the stay stage and greenlights significant harms in the interim.”
Now that this roadblock has been removed, the Trump administration can proceed with implementing key provisions of the executive order ahead of November, at least for now.
But a new hurdle looms for the Trump administration now that the USPS has passed its final rule. “Every prior challenge was filed before the rule existed, which is why the administration has won on ripeness four times running without once defending the rule’s legality,” said James Sample, a law professor at Hofstra University. “That defense expires with the next round of complaints, all of which will plead a final rule that now exists.”
Talwani did leave the door open for the voting rights organizations that brought this legal challenge to amend its complaint, since the USPS passed its final rule and outlined how it intends to implement the executive order. After Talwani issued her ruling, the group filed its amended complaint, specifically targeting the USPS final rule.
“USPS has no such authority,” the new complaint says. “The Final Rule both assigns USPS an unprecedented gatekeeping role in the administration of mail voting, intruding on the constitutional authority of the states and Congress to regulate federal elections.”
At the same time, other new legal challenges are already forming in response to the USPS’ moves to enact the executive order. The coalition of Democratic states that brought the separate case that reached the Supreme Court filed a new lawsuit Wednesday morning, specifically challenging the constitutionality of the USPS’ final rule.
On Tuesday, a separate coalition, including the major Democratic party organizations, also renewed its request for a federal judge in Washington, D.C., to block the executive order.
But time is running out for both these legal challenges to mature and for the administration to implement its directive before the first ballots are mailed out next week.
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