Boston judge lifts last nationwide block on Trump mail-voting order

A federal judge in Boston on Wednesday lifted the last nationwide injunction that had blocked President Donald Trump’s mail-in voting order, clearing the Postal Service to apply a new ballot rule ahead of the 3 November midterm elections.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani vacated the preliminary injunction she had issued earlier in August. She pointed to Monday’s Supreme Court decision in a related case brought by California and 22 other states. That unsigned order had already removed one nationwide block. Talwani wrote that it was “likely that the Supreme Court would apply the same reasoning” to her remaining injunction, which had come from a suit by the League of Women Voters and other groups.

Neither ruling said the policy is legal. Both turned on timing. The justices and then Talwani treated the challenges as premature once the Postal Service issued a final rule. Talwani’s order was without prejudice. Plaintiffs can amend their complaints and ask for a new injunction now that the rule exists. Lawyers for the states and the League have said they will do that.

The Postal Service rule requires states to share mail-voter lists and to use reviewed, uniquely barcoded ballot envelopes. About 30 percent of voters cast ballots by mail in 2024. Trump’s March executive order had gone further. It told the Department of Homeland Security to build a national list of adult citizens from federal databases and send that list to states. Talwani, in June, held that the president has no constitutional power to run state elections and that no statute gives the Postal Service authority to regulate who may vote by mail. She blocked those pillars for this year’s contests.

On Tuesday she separately found that the administration had violated her injunction by finalizing the Postal Service rule while the order was still in force. Wednesday’s vacatur does not erase that finding. It does remove the nationwide stop that the Postal Service had cited as the reason it would not apply the rule to 2026.

Election officials in the states that sued now have weeks, not months, to decide whether they can print barcoded envelopes, transmit voter files and still run a November election. Their June complaint called those tasks Herculean on a short clock. Republican officials in other states have treated the federal rule as cover for tighter mail procedures they already wanted.

The Supreme Court was careful. It said that lifting the emergency stay “does not mean that any measure taken by the Government to implement the Order will necessarily be lawful.” Talwani quoted that sentence. The next fight will be on a complete record: a final rule, a short calendar, and a claim that Congress never handed USPS the power the rule assumes.

For voters the change is practical. A mail ballot that lacks the new barcode, or that arrives through a process the Postal Service now flags, can be delayed or rejected. States that refuse to send their lists risk a federal argument that their mail ballots are out of compliance. States that send the lists hand a voter file to a federal agency weeks before a Congress-deciding election.

Talwani was appointed by Barack Obama. She is the same judge who, in June, wrote that “the Constitution does not grant the President any specific powers over elections.” Wednesday she did not take that sentence back. She concluded that, after the Supreme Court’s procedural ruling, she could not keep a nationwide injunction in place on the old complaint. The policy now moves unless a new filing stops it.

November is 69 days from Wednesday. That is the number every clerk, party lawyer and postal manager is using.