A federal judge in Boston has barred the U.S. Postal Service from carrying out the core of a Trump executive order on mail-in ballots, and this time the block applies in every state. U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani granted a preliminary injunction on Tuesday, August 11, stopping the Postal Service from implementing or enforcing Section 3 of Executive Order 14399 for the November 3 midterm elections or any earlier federal election.
The ruling lands with fewer than 90 days to go before the midterms, at the point in the calendar when election offices normally begin preparing absentee ballot mailings.
What Section 3 Would Have Required
Executive Order 14399, signed in March, did not ban mail voting. It routed the question through the Postal Service. Under Section 3, a state that wanted its residents to receive mail-in or absentee ballots through the mail would first have had to notify the Postal Service of its intent and then hand the federal government a list of eligible voters built on citizenship data. The deadline for that notification fell 60 days before the November 3 election.
From there, the order envisioned a new ballot envelope carrying a barcode tied to an individual voter. Ballots addressed to or returned by people who did not appear on an approved list could have been refused. In practice, that would have made the Postal Service a gatekeeper for a step of the voting process that has historically been run by state and county election officials.
Election administrators had raised a practical objection alongside the legal one. Building a new envelope standard, a new barcode system and a federal voter-list handoff in under three months would have been an extraordinarily compressed timeline for offices already printing ballots.
What the Judge Ruled
Talwani’s 27-page decision turns on authority rather than on the merits of mail voting itself. The court found that Congress has never given the Postal Service the power to regulate mail-in voting. The Postal Service delivers mail; setting the terms on which a state may distribute ballots is not among the powers lawmakers handed it.
The judge also pointed to timing. She wrote that the order is “causing confusion” and that it threatens “increasing chaos and an erosion of trust in our democracy,” and concluded that an injunction was necessary to keep the rules from shifting on the eve of an election.
The injunction is preliminary, not a final judgment. It bars the Postal Service from enforcing Section 3 and from moving ahead with rulemaking to implement it for the November elections, while the underlying case continues.
The Second Block in Two Months
This is not the first time the order has been stopped, and not the first time by this judge. In June, Talwani ruled in a separate case brought by more than 20 states that the order could not be applied to the plaintiffs. That decision protected the states that had gone to court and left everyone else in an uncertain position.
Tuesday’s ruling closes that gap. It came in a suit filed by the Massachusetts League of Women Voters, with the American Civil Liberties Union involved in the challenge, and its reach is nationwide rather than limited to the parties that sued.
Reactions and What Happens Next
The White House has defended the executive order as an election integrity measure, arguing that verifying eligibility before ballots go into the mail protects the result. The administration can appeal the injunction, and the case itself is not over.
Critics of the order, including the groups that brought the suit, argue that the Constitution assigns the mechanics of elections to the states and to Congress, and that a president cannot rewrite ballot procedures by directing a delivery agency. Supporters counter that federal oversight of federal elections is appropriate and that the order simply asked states to confirm who is eligible.
Whatever the appellate courts do, the practical picture for the coming midterms is now clearer than it was a week ago. Unless the injunction is lifted, the Postal Service will handle mail ballots the way it has in past cycles.
What This Means for Americans
For the roughly one in three voters who cast a ballot by mail in recent federal elections, the immediate effect is that nothing changes. There is no new envelope to look for, no federal list to appear on, and no additional step between requesting an absentee ballot and returning it. Voters should continue to follow the deadlines and instructions issued by their own state or county election office, which remain the governing rules.
The larger question the case raises is unresolved: how much authority a president holds over the administration of elections. That fight will continue in the appellate courts, and it is unlikely to be settled before November.
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