By Nate Raymond
BOSTON, Aug 25 (Reuters) – A federal judge on Tuesday declined for now to block a final rule that the U.S. Postal Service adopted at the direction of President Donald Trump that would tighten requirements for mail-in voting, even as she concluded the agency had violated a court order by issuing it.
Boston-based U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani ruled a day after the U.S. Supreme Court lifted one of two court orders she had issued that had prevented USPS from implementing an executive order Trump signed targeting mail-in ballots.
Despite those rulings, USPS continues to be blocked from fulfilling Trump’s directive, and various challenges to the executive order are still playing out in federal courts, leaving the ultimate fate of the measure uncertain.
USPS and the plaintiffs had no immediate comment.
The legal battles come less than three months before the November midterm elections, in which control of Congress is at stake. Tens of millions of Americans rely on mail-in voting, and the rule’s fate could determine whether they face new requirements to cast ballots this fall.
Trump signed his executive order in March after years of calling for tighter rules on voting by mail and pushing the false claim that his 2020 election defeat was the result of widespread voter fraud. Under the U.S. Constitution, states are assigned the role of administering federal elections.
Talwani had issued rulings in two different cases blocking implementation of Trump’s order, first in a case by 23 states mostly led by Democrats — the case the Supreme Court addressed — and then later in a lawsuit by voting rights groups including the League of Women Voters.
The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, on Monday put one of those decisions on hold, saying a challenge by Democratic-led states had been premature as courts “review final rules, not proposed rules — and certainly not antecedent internal directives to propose a rule.”
But the injunction the voting rights groups obtained remained in place even after the Supreme Court ruled, and they had urged Talwani to conclude USPS flouted it when it released a final version of the rule on Friday that implemented Trump’s order.
That rule would require states to provide USPS with lists of voters who received mailed ballots and provide unique barcodes applied to outbound and return ballot mail envelopes.
Talwani, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, on Tuesday agreed, saying USPS had “feigned compliance” with her ruling and ignored her explicit directive to not initiate or complete rulemaking in order to fulfill Trump’s executive order.
But she said that given that USPS acknowledges it cannot implement its rule while her injunction remains in place, she would not order it blocked at this time.
She added that the violation “may ultimately inure to Plaintiffs’ benefit,” as the voting rights groups could challenge a final rule instead of a “hypothetical” one it might draft.
States including California as well as arms of the Democratic Party have separately announced plans to continue challenging Trump’s executive order and its implementation.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston, Editing by Franklin Paul and Deepa Babington)
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