Federal judge to rule in pivotal challenge to Trump’s attack on mail voting

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Perhaps the most pivotal scene yet in the months-long legal drama over President Donald Trump’s attempt to kneecap mail voting ahead of the 2026 midterms will unfold in a Boston courtroom Thursday morning.

U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani will hear combined arguments in two lawsuits challenging the U.S. Postal Service’s (USPS) implementation of Trump’s executive order: one brought by a coalition of pro-voting organizations and individual mail voters led by the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts (LWVMA), and another by 24 Democratic-led states and Washington, D.C., led by California. 

At the center of the cases are new rules approved by USPS that force election officials to overhaul mail voting procedures at the eleventh hour. 

Barcode-equipped envelopes for mail ballots would be required, and USPS would need to preapprove them. Election offices must also submit lists of eligible mail voters to the Postal Service in advance. If state or local administrators fail to get USPS’s approval for their envelope design or don’t upload their voter data, then mail carriers won’t deliver mail ballots to their residents.

Hanging in the balance? The availability of mail voting this year. Recent revelations from a USPS whistleblower confirmed what election officials — Democrats and Republicans alike — have warned: The USPS rule will be “virtually impossible” to follow, creating a risk of “mass disenfranchisement.”

With fewer than 70 days to go before the election, no one can say for certain whether voting by mail — the way 46.8 million Americans cast their ballots in the 2024 presidential election, and 35.3 million in the 2022 midterms — will be a realistic option this year. And for states that collect ballots mostly by mail — like Oregon, Washington, Colorado and Utah — allowing the rule to take effect could potentially disenfranchise millions of voters, undermining the very validity of November’s elections.

The Department of Justice (DOJ), along with a dozen Republican-led states, has claimed that the USPS rule is a “modest” change that doesn’t infringe upon states’ constitutional authority to decide the “Times, Places and Manner” of running elections. But their most potent defensive strategy may be the clock: The longer it takes for this litigation to run its course, no matter the ultimate outcome, the more chaos and confusion it will set upon the electorate. 

Whatever Thursday’s hearing brings, it won’t be the legal struggle’s final act. Whoever loses will likely appeal all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which could — again — decide to weigh in on this momentous matter with an emergency docket ruling.

One court battle after another

Just ten days ago, the U.S. Supreme Court sparked a wildfire of court filings when it reversed a 1st Circuit Court of Appeals decision and lifted an injunction that Judge Talwani had issued in the State of California case. The Court agreed with the DOJ’s argument that it was too soon for a court to assess the legality of Trump’s order — after all, it concluded, USPS hadn’t implemented it yet.

But that procedural argument over the lawsuit’s “ripeness” disappeared when USPS published its final rule last week. 

The LWVMA and Democratic states renewed their challenges, asking the court to bar USPS from applying the rule during this year’s elections. Talwani quickly agreed to temporarily prevent the administration from forcing state and local election officials to comply with the rule while the preliminary injunction legal fight continued.

There’s not much doubt about what Talwani will do now. The Barack Obama appointee has already enjoined Trump’s dictate twice, decrying it as an “unconstitutional” order that also “directs the violation of several of [the] obligations imposed on USPS by Congress.”

But the Trump administration will almost certainly appeal, meaning the issue could find itself before the Supreme Court once again as soon as the end of this week. 

When the Court revoked Talwani’s earlier injunction, it did so on purely procedural grounds, as the conservative majority emphasized in its unsigned opinion. 

“The Court’s disposition of this application does not mean that any measure taken by the Government to implement the Order will necessarily be lawful,” the majority wrote. “On that score, time will tell.”

Trump’s order and the USPS rule aim to exorcise a phantom problem: illegal noncitizen voting. As dozens of studies and audits have shown, vanishingly few ineligible residents try to vote. And even as the Trump administration has diverted investigative and prosecutorial resources away from drug trafficking and international organized crime to crack down on this specious threat to electoral integrity, precious few new cases have been uncovered. 

Whatever happens in this litigation, it may not be the final chapter in the legal battle to stop Trump’s order. 

A separate case brought by Democratic organizations and elected officials in Washington, D.C., is also advancing, albeit not as quickly as the Massachusetts cases.* Briefing in that case is set to wrap up next week and a ruling could follow. After that, expect even more appeals. 

*The Elias Law Group (ELG) represents the plaintiffs in this case. ELG Firm Chair Marc Elias is the founder of Democracy Docket.