Judge blocks Trump’s mail-in voting executive order again
Ballots to be sorted at a polling location inside City Hall during a primary election in San Francisco, California, US, on Tuesday, June 2, 2026. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
President Donald Trump’s executive order barring the U.S. Postal Service from delivering mail-in ballots to anyone not on a list of eligible voters compiled by the federal government suffered another legal setback.
Big picture view:
On Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani ruled in favor of the League of Women Voters and other voting rights groups and issued a preliminary injunction stopping the Postal Service from taking any steps to implement the order before this fall’s midterm elections.
What they're saying:
"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 from changing election rules on the eve of the election," she wrote.
The backstory:
Talwani sided with the plaintiffs’ argument that the executive order violated the Constitution because only the states and Congress have the power to regulate elections, writing in her decision that "[t]he executive branch has no authority to regulate elections."
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The judge also noted that the Trump administration’s lawyers had not defended the constitutionality of the order. The attorneys for the White House had sought to convince the court that the voting rights groups lacked standing to sue under the rules for how federal agencies develop and issue regulations.
Dig deeper:
The ruling marks the second time Talwani has ruled against the Trump administration in a case involving this executive order. In June, she sided with a group of Democratic state attorneys general who made a similar argument when they challenged the compilation of the federal list of eligible voters that was mandated by the order and would have been used by the Postal Service.
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In late July, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling, blocking the administration’s effort to resume the mail-in voting restrictions in the more than 20 states that were part of the lawsuit.
What's next:
The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to overturn the lower courts’ rulings in the case brought by the states. This latest ruling creates a new hurdle for the White House to clear in its attempt to get the order in place by November.
The Source: Information for this article was taken from The Associated Press. This story was reported from Orlando.