Judge blocks Trump order that would have let USPS refuse to deliver mail ballots

A federal judge in Massachusetts Thursday blocked federal agencies from implementing President Donald Trump’s sweeping attack on mail voting and his attempt to create a national voter registration list before the midterm elections.

District Judge Indira Talwani, a Barack Obama appointee, found that major parts of Trump’s March 2026 anti-voting executive order were “legally void” for exceeding the president’s power and violating the separation of powers by encroaching on states’ authority to administer elections.

“The Constitution does not grant the President any specific powers over elections,” Talwani wrote.

The 37-page ruling marks a major win for voters before the midterms. In siding with Democratic state attorneys general, Talwani largely stopped the United States Postal Service (USPS) from refusing to deliver mail ballots unless states hand over their voter lists to the Trump administration.

Her order also significantly prevents the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Social Security Administration (SSA) from effectively creating a nationwide voter registration list by compiling lists of verified U.S. citizens eligible to vote.

Talwani concluded that both of these efforts infringed upon states’ right to determine who can vote in upcoming elections.

“The Constitution reserves the power to determine voter eligibility to the States alone,” Talwani wrote. “Neither the Executive Branch nor Congress may interfere with this power.”

Her order applies in the 23 states and the District of Columbia, which all sued to halt Trump’s order.

Talwani’s ruling Thursday was largely expected. Since Trump signed the order, voting rights experts, constitutional scholars and election officials said courts would strike it down as unconstitutional.

In a hearing earlier this month, the judge also said she was concerned that Trump’s directives would unconstitutionally disenfranchise eligible voters.

Last month, the USPS proposed a new rule requiring state election officials to send the federal government a list of voters who have requested a mail-in or absentee ballot at least 30 days before ballots are sent under state law.

If voters aren’t on the state lists, which USPS would maintain, they will not receive a ballot. If implemented, the proposal would effectively create a federal registration list for absentee voters.

On Wednesday, Postmaster General David Steiner publicly confirmed that the Postal Service would not deliver mail ballots in states that refused to hand over their voter information — an alarming break from the agency’s decades-long history as a neutral, nonpartisan carrier of U.S. election mail.

However, Talwani noted that the Postal Service has no authority to control mail voting.

“Accordingly, USPS lacks statutory authorization to promulgate any binding regulations on mail-in voting,” she wrote.

Similarly, the judge found that DHS’s efforts to create a national list of eligible voters using data from across the federal government intruded on state powers and violated federal law.

All states, she wrote, already maintain registered voter databases as required by Congress through the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA).

“Notably, nowhere in HAVA does Congress prescribe who should be included on State voter lists,” Talwani wrote. “Further, neither in HAVA nor any other federal statute does Congress authorize the federal government to create their own voting database.” 

“Accordingly, the creation of the Confirmed Citizen Lists is ultra vires” — i.e., beyond the executive’s powers — “because the President lacks any authority to compile voter lists for each State,” she added.

Trump’s order also directed the Department of Justice to use DHS’s proposed voter eligibility lists to investigate and prosecute state and local election officials who issue ballots to people not eligible to vote.

However, by incorporating the DHS’s lists into law enforcement efforts and using noncompliance with those lists as evidence of criminal wrongdoing, Talwani concluded that Trump was ultimately creating a new criminal offense in violation of Congress’s authority to create laws.

“Such efforts fall outside the Presidents’ Article II and otherwise-delegated authority,” the judge wrote, adding in a warning that it would also “chill local election officials from complying with legal obligations to ensure that all eligible citizens may vote.”

Talwani stipulated that her order does not bar states from asking the federal government for assistance for verifying the citizenship or eligibility of any voter “within the framework provided by Congress.”