Supreme Court asked to review USPS mail ballot rule ahead of midterm elections News
Joe Ravi, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Supreme Court asked to review USPS mail ballot rule ahead of midterm elections

The Trump administration on Thursday asked the US Supreme Court to remove a federal judge’s order barring the US Postal Service (USPS) from enforcing new requirements on how states send ballots to voters.

The rule in question, enacted by USPS last month under Executive Order 14399, requires state and local election officials to submit mail ballot envelope designs to USPS for review and to include barcodes and to upload names and addresses of mail voters to a federal portal. Mail ballots that fail to meet these requirements would be rejected under the rule. A federal judge for the US District Court of Massachusetts blocked the enforcement of these requirements via a 14-day temporary restraining order (TRO), making compliance with the rule effectively voluntary.

The Supreme Court stayed an earlier injunction in this litigation last week, holding in an unsigned opinion that the states had sued before the administration’s policies were concrete and ripe for review. USPS published the final rule two days later, reopening the matter for judicial review.

Thursday’s application faces a jurisdictional hurdle before it can be considered on the merits because TROs are generally not appealable under 28 USC 1292(a)(1). The application argues that this TRO functions as an appealable injunction because ballots will enter the mail before an ordinary review can run its course.

On the merits, the administration argues that the rule “imposes only modest envelope-design and addressee-information requirements,” pointing to USPS authority under 39 USC 401(2) and 404(a)(1). Opponents argue that the Elections Clause assigns authority over congressional elections to state legislatures and congress itself, hence these requirements exceed USPS authority.

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