Federal Judge Blocks USPS From Restricting Mail-In Ballot Delivery

Summary

For the second time, a federal judge has stopped the Trump administration from curtailing mail-in voting, this time blocking a US Postal Service plan that would have denied ballot delivery to voters in states refusing to hand over their voter rolls to the federal government. Judge Emmet Sullivan of the US District Court for the District of Columbia issued the ruling, finding that the proposed USPS restrictions violated agreements the agency made in a 2021 legal settlement. The case was brought in part by the NAACP, which sued to prevent the policy from taking effect. Sullivan's order means the Postal Service cannot withhold mail ballot services as leverage over states' voter-registration data, at least for now. Trump has made restricting mail-in voting a central part of his second-term election-integrity agenda, arguing the practice is vulnerable to fraud. Critics counter that mail balloting is widely used, legally protected, and that conditioning it on the surrender of voter rolls would effectively disenfranchise millions. The ruling lands well before any major federal election, but its implications are significant: it marks back-to-back judicial rebukes of the administration's effort to reshape how Americans cast ballots from home.