A federal judge in Massachusetts blocked Trump's mail-in voting reform this Friday by converting a temporary injunction into a preliminary injunction, a more robust and appealable legal instrument that keeps the Postal Service's (USPS) regulations on hold ahead of the midterm elections on November 3.
The magistrate Indira Talwani, from the District of Massachusetts, determined in a report that the expedited implementation of the rule—approved less than 70 days before the elections—would make the disenfranchisement of millions of voters "practically inevitable," and emphasized that the record contains no evidence of fraud in mail-in voting that would justify the urgency.
"The court concludes, on one hand, that the immediate implementation of the final rule issued less than seventy days before the November 2026 elections threatens to deprive millions of American citizens of their right to vote who wish to vote by mail; and on the other hand, that the record contains no evidence of fraud in mail-in voting to support the rushed implementation of this rule," Talwani wrote in her ruling.
The judge also dismissed the Department of Justice argument that the new USPS regulations are merely general postal norms, noting that they "explicitly and exclusively" regulate electoral mail, and added that Congress never delegated to the Postal Service the authority granted to it by the Elections Clause of the Constitution.
The lawsuit was filed by 23 states, the District of Columbia, and the governor of Pennsylvania, along with civil rights organizations, against the final regulation of the USPS.
The regulation requires states to create accounts on a new electronic portal, certify the design of their ballots, and upload individual data for each voter — name, address, and unique barcode — to the postal system, all within a timeframe that the plaintiffs deem impossible.
Talwani also rejected the Justice Department's request to pause her own order while the administration appeals, clarifying that the ruling applies only to the 2026 midterm elections.
The decision comes a day after the Trump administration requested the Supreme Court to allow the USPS to implement the new regulation while the appeal is ongoing.
The Attorney General John Sauer argued before the highest court that the changes are "modest" and that Talwani's order—by making compliance voluntary—creates "confusion and chaos."
The origin of the dispute is the executive order signed by Donald Trump on March 31, titled "Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections," which instructs the USPS to deliver ballots by mail only to voters included on federal eligibility lists compiled using data from the Department of Homeland Security.
The Supreme Court suspended a previous injunction from Talwani in August, but it did so on procedural grounds—the lawsuit was premature before the regulation was finalized—without addressing the merits of the case. After the regulation was completed on August 26, new lawsuits gave the judge another opportunity to intervene, and on August 27, she issued a temporary suspension of 14 days, which she escalated to a preliminary injunction this Friday.
The urgency of the case intensified because North Carolina began mailing ballots on Friday, as required by its state law, becoming the first state to do so in this election cycle.
The state attorney general, Jeff Jackson, warned that if the Supreme Court rules in favor of the administration, it would "throw our election into chaos."
"The ballots are printed, the process is underway, and the citizens of North Carolina deserve fair and orderly elections," declared Jackson.
The contradiction between Trump's rhetoric against mail-in voting and his personal use of the same system has been widely documented: the president voted by mail in Florida in March 2026 for a state special election, despite calling this mechanism "mail-in voter fraud."
The White House then justified that the law includes "common sense exceptions" for cases of illness, disability, military service, or travel.
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