By Nate Raymond
BOSTON, Sept 4 (Reuters) – A federal judge on Friday extended a ban stopping President Donald Trump’s administration from implementing a new U.S. Postal Service rule that would tighten mail-in voting requirements ahead of the November congressional elections.
Boston-based U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani issued the injunction at the behest of Democratic-led states and voting rights groups, after one state sent out mail ballots for the elections on Friday. Talwani wrote that only laws passed by Congress can supersede states’ authority over elections, adding “the executive has no inherent authority” over voting rules.
Congress has never delegated authority over voting to the Postal Service, Talwani wrote, and the agency’s new rule “clashes with Congress’s statutory scheme, and is unconstitutional.”
The immediate deadlines demanded by the Postal Service’s rule would create “chaos” for groups that provide information about how to vote, Talwani wrote. Organizations such as the League of Women Voters “do not know whether to advise their members to vote by mail, despite legal entitlement, due to the high risk of disenfranchisement,” her ruling states.
The administration swiftly filed a notice of appeal.
The USPS declined to comment on the ruling, but U.S. Postmaster General David Steiner defended the agency’s handling of the issue.
“We have at all times acted within our legal authority to issue a rule to achieve those policies, but ultimately the courts will decide that question, and we will follow the court’s determination,” Steiner said on Friday.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
POSTAL SERVICE RULE FOLLOWS TRUMP ORDER
Under the rule, states must supply the USPS with lists of mail ballot recipients, and all outbound and return ballot envelopes must bear unique barcodes. The USPS, under the rule, may refuse to deliver ballots that do not comply with the new standards or are associated with voters who do not appear on the lists.
Last week, Talwani, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, issued a 14-day temporary restraining order to prevent USPS’ rule from being enforced while she considered whether to issue a longer-term injunction.
The administration on Thursday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene and lift the temporary order so the rule could take effect. The court’s 6-3 conservative majority last week lifted a prior order Talwani issued preventing USPS from imposing such restrictions.
USPS issued its rule to implement an executive order Trump signed in March after years of the Republican president calling to restrict voting by mail and pushing the false claim that his 2020 presidential election defeat to Democrat Joe Biden was the result of widespread voter fraud.
All 50 states allow for some form of mail-in voting. Of those, 29 states allow voters to ask to cast ballots by mail without providing a reason, and eight conduct their elections entirely by mail. North Carolina on Friday became the first state to mail ballots for the November elections.
The rule, if allowed to take effect, could force state election officials to try to overhaul their systems with just weeks left until the elections to comply with a system that critics say USPS is not ready to implement.
Talwani said it was “implausible” that states would be able to comply with the rule for this year’s looming elections, as it would require 10,000 election jurisdictions to redesign their ballots, print them and submit voter information to a USPS-run online portal that does not yet exist.
“Having considered this series of hurdles for officials against the backdrop of an impending election, and mindful of the fact that any minor malfunction will result in the denial of mail ballots, the court concludes that disenfranchisement for Plaintiff Organizations’ members, regardless of residence, is practically inevitable,” she wrote, referring to the voting rights groups.
The administration had asked a federal appeals court to set aside Talwani’s initial restraining order. But the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had not acted on that request before the judge issued her latest decision.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Additional reporting by David Shepardson in Washington; Editing by Rod Nickel and Tom Hogue)
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