A US federal judge has blocked the Postal Service from implementing part of President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to tighten rules governing mail-in voting ahead of the November midterm elections.
US District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston issued the ruling on Tuesday, marking another setback for Trump’s efforts to expand the federal government’s role in regulating elections.
Trump, a Republican, signed the executive order in March after repeatedly calling for stricter rules on voting by mail and falsely claiming that widespread voter fraud was responsible for his defeat in the 2020 presidential election.
The order directed states to provide lists of eligible voters who could receive mail-in ballots. It also required the US Postal Service (USPS) to refuse delivery of ballots from states that failed to comply.
White House spokesperson Lauren Bis defended the administration’s position, saying the government would continue implementing Trump’s agenda within the law.
“The entire Trump Administration will continue lawfully enacting the agenda President Trump was elected to enact – which includes the safety and security of American elections,” Bis said in a statement.
Tuesday’s ruling expands on an earlier decision by Talwani in June, which barred the Trump administration from implementing the order in 23 mostly Democratic-led states.
Voting rights groups represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) subsequently asked Talwani to extend the injunction nationwide and prevent the USPS from enforcing the order anywhere in the country.
Granting the request, Talwani ruled that the federal executive branch does not have the constitutional authority to regulate elections, which she said is a responsibility assigned to individual states.
“The (executive order) is presently causing confusion and threatening both increasing chaos and an erosion of trust in our democracy,” Talwani wrote.
She added that protecting voters’ ability to participate in elections “heavily outweighs” the administration’s attempt to intervene in election regulation.
ACLU voting rights lawyer Sophia Lin Lakin welcomed the decision, accusing the administration of using government agencies in a way that could disrupt the electoral process.
“Today’s ruling sends another necessary message to an administration that continues to weaponize portions of the government to sow chaos into our elections,” Lakin said.
The Trump administration has appealed Talwani’s earlier ruling to the US Supreme Court, asking the justices to suspend the decision.
The administration argues that the legal challenge was premature because federal agencies had not yet finalised plans for implementing the executive order.
The Supreme Court, where conservative justices hold a 6-3 majority, has yet to rule on the request.
A separate case filed by the Democratic Party in a federal court in Washington, DC, produced a different outcome in May, when a judge declined to immediately block the executive order.
That judge ruled that intervention at the time would have been premature because the USPS had not yet issued its proposed rule. An appeals court subsequently upheld the decision.
Talwani said circumstances had since changed because the Postal Service had proposed its rule and the November election was approaching.
“That it is now less than 90 days before the November 3, 2026 midterm elections underscores the critical need for an injunction to prevent Defendants (the federal government) from changing election rules on the eve of the election,” she wrote.