Late Thursday night, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani issued a 14-day temporary restraining order blocking the U.S. Postal Service from enforcing core parts of its newly finalized mail ballot rule — one day after she had vacated her own nationwide injunction and left the rule, for the first time since June, with no court order standing in its way. The new order came in two cases at once: the League of Women Voters’ suit, refiled against the final rule, and a fresh lawsuit by a coalition of more than two dozen states and jurisdictions co-led by Washington Attorney General Nick Brown. Talwani wrote that the Postal Service had presented no evidence of fraudulent mail voting that would necessitate the rule, and that the challengers are likely to prevail on their claims that the rule is unconstitutional and beyond the agency’s authority to issue. A hearing on a longer-lasting block is set for September 3. North Carolina begins sending ballots September 4. The election is 67 days away.
The Week in Four Rulings
Monday: the Supreme Court ruled that the 23 states challenging the president’s mail voting executive order lacked standing — their suit was premature — wiping out the injunction they had won, while explicitly declining to say the order was lawful. Wednesday: Judge Talwani, citing the Supreme Court’s logic, vacated her separate nationwide injunction in the League of Women Voters case, but did so without prejudice — an invitation to come back with a challenge the Supreme Court’s reasoning couldn’t touch. Wednesday and Thursday: the plaintiffs took the invitation. The League and its co-plaintiffs filed a supplemental complaint and emergency motions aimed not at the executive order but at the Postal Service’s final rule implementing it; California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed suit; New York voting rights groups filed in state court; and the Brown-led multistate coalition sued the Postal Service directly. Late Thursday: Talwani granted the temporary restraining order in both cases before her. The rule that had been cleared for implementation on Wednesday was blocked again roughly a day later.
What the Rule Would Do
The final rule, which the Postal Service made effective August 21 and said it would implement immediately for the November elections if courts allowed, operationalizes the executive order through the mail itself. States would be required to submit lists of their mail voters to the Postal Service. Mail ballots would move only in envelopes carrying bar codes unique to each voter, with envelope designs submitted to the Postal Service for advance approval — regardless, as the state plaintiffs emphasized, of the impending deadlines for a November 3 election whose first ballots go out in days. Ballots from states that do not comply would simply not be carried. It is the mechanism this newsletter described when the Postal Service first published its plan: federal control over state elections achieved not by changing any state’s law, but by conditioning delivery of the ballots state law provides for.
Why the New Cases Are Different
The Supreme Court’s Monday ruling turned on prematurity: the states had sued over an executive order before the government took concrete action implementing it. That objection is now gone, because the concrete action exists — a final agency rule, effective and slated for immediate implementation. Suing over a final rule is the most ordinary posture in administrative law, and it revives every argument the earlier rounds established: that the Constitution assigns election regulation to states and Congress, that no statute gives the Postal Service authority to condition ballot delivery on state compliance with federal demands, and — Talwani’s pointed addition on Thursday — that the government has produced no evidence of the mail ballot fraud the rule is supposedly designed to prevent. Justice Jackson’s dissent on Monday described plaintiffs trapped in a procedural loop: too early to sue before implementation, too late after. The plaintiffs’ answer, delivered within 48 hours, was to sue at the exact moment the trap opens.
The Compressed Clock
The temporary restraining order runs 14 days, carrying the block into roughly the second week of September. The September 3 hearing will determine whether it becomes a preliminary injunction lasting through the election. North Carolina’s September 4 ballot date — the first in the country, for overseas and military voters — now falls under the order’s protection, meaning those ballots go out under existing law. One friction point to watch: even after Thursday’s order, Postal Service statements describing the rule as in effect continued to circulate, and earlier this week Talwani found that the administration had violated her prior injunction in issuing the rule at all. Whether the Postal Service fully complies with the new order — and whether the administration appeals it, or returns to the Supreme Court — are the open questions of the next several days.
Where Things Stand
The pattern across three months of this litigation is now unmistakable: every time a court has examined this policy on the merits — the executive order in June, the appeals court in August, the final rule on Thursday — it has found it likely unlawful. Every victory the administration has won has been procedural: standing, prematurity, the identity of the plaintiff. The practical state of play as ballots begin to move: mail voting operates under state law, the Postal Service is barred from enforcing the rule’s core requirements for two weeks, a September 3 hearing decides what governs through November, and the Supreme Court likely gets the case back in some form before then. The People’s Podium will be following each step.