Appeals court keeps Trump's mail-ballot rule blocked as Supreme Court weighs emergency appeal

A federal appeals court has refused to let the Trump administration enforce a new Postal Service rule restricting how mail-in ballots are handled ahead of the November midterms, leaving the fate of the regulation in the hands of the Supreme Court just as several states begin printing and mailing ballots.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled on September 10 that the government had "failed to show" that the rule, which requires states to submit voter information to a federal portal and print standardized barcodes on ballot envelopes, would not cause "chaos and widespread voter disenfranchisement" if it took effect this close to Election Day. The ruling keeps in place a preliminary injunction issued a week earlier by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston, and it means the regulation remains blocked unless the Supreme Court intervenes on an emergency application still pending before the justices.

The rule and the numbers

The dispute centers on a final rule the Postal Service published in the Federal Register in late August, titled "Ballot Mail for Federal Elections." Issued under an executive order President Trump signed on March 31, the rule adds a new section to the Domestic Mail Manual directing USPS to refuse delivery of outbound federal ballots that do not meet new envelope-design standards or that are addressed to voters not listed on a state's "Mail-In and Absentee Participation List" — a roster election officials would have to upload, with names, addresses and individualized barcodes, to an untested federal online portal.

Twenty-three states led by California, along with the District of Columbia, sued to block it, arguing Congress never authorized the Postal Service to regulate how ballots are designed or who receives them. A separate coalition — the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts, the national League of Women Voters, the Association of Americans Resident Overseas, the U.S. Vote Foundation, OCA-Asian Pacific American Advocates and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority — filed a parallel suit. Judge Talwani found that rolling out the rule "less than seventy days before the November 2026 election threatens disenfranchisement of millions of United States citizens who seek to vote by mail," and made voter disenfranchisement, in her words, "practically inevitable" on the administration's timeline.

How the fight reached the Supreme Court

The case has already bounced between courts once this summer. In late August, the Supreme Court voted 6-3 to stay an earlier injunction against a related piece of the executive order, allowing part of the rule to take effect; Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, warning the move would create a "Kafkaesque nightmare" and "needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections." Days later, Talwani — acting on the specific ballot-mail regulation now at issue — issued a new temporary restraining order and then, on September 4, converted it into the preliminary injunction now before the appeals court.

The Justice Department appealed to both the First Circuit and the Supreme Court. Solicitor General John Sauer told the justices the rule imposes only "modest envelope-design and addressee-information requirements" and that Talwani's order "risks sowing confusion and chaos" by making compliance voluntary. Justice Jackson, who handles emergency matters arising from the First Circuit, set a September 9 deadline for the states and advocacy groups to respond before deciding whether to act alone or refer the application to the full Court; the underlying case, filed in federal court in Boston, drew amicus briefs from the NAACP, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, a bipartisan group of members of Congress and several law-professor groups before the deadline passed.

California's deputy solicitor general told the Court the rule amounts to "USPS' unprecedented experiment with our Nation's most cherished franchise — the right to vote," calling it unlawful because the Postal Service has never before regulated how ballots are cast. Lawyers for the challengers made a similar point in a joint statement issued after the First Circuit ruling.

"The U.S. Postal Service is not the gatekeeper for mail ballots. It does not have that authority. And it cannot usurp election authority from the states and Congress."

States already mailing ballots

The practical stakes are immediate. North Carolina had already begun printing and mailing ballots under its own statutory deadlines by the time Talwani issued her injunction, and Alabama began mailing ballots on September 9; officials in several more states expected to start the week of September 13, according to a running account of the litigation's timeline. North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson, a Democrat, said after Talwani's ruling that "the ballots are printed, the process is underway, and North Carolinians deserve a lawful and orderly election." Election administrators in states that had not yet begun printing said a late reversal from the Supreme Court could force them to redesign envelopes and rebuild mailing lists within days, a scramble that both Talwani and the First Circuit panel cited in finding the government had not shown the public interest favored letting the rule proceed.

The appellate panel — Judges Gustavo A. Gelpí, Julie Rikelman and Seth Aframe, all appointed by President Biden — went further than simply crediting the lower court's findings. Reporting on the ruling noted the judges wrote that "there is no record evidence of past fraud or a likelihood of impending fraud related to the November 3 election," and that implementing the rule now would "likely result in the disenfranchisement of millions of voters across the country while providing minimal — if any — gains in combating voter fraud."

The administration has cast the litigation differently, arguing that Talwani's injunction itself creates uncertainty for election officials by leaving compliance optional this cycle rather than mandatory, and that safeguards against fraud in the mail system are overdue. That argument has so far persuaded a majority of the Supreme Court once already, in the earlier, related dispute over the executive order in August.

What happens next

With the First Circuit's denial in hand, the question returns to Justice Jackson and, potentially, the full Supreme Court, which could rule on the stay application at any time — as it did on the related dispute in August, acting within hours of receiving full briefing. If the justices grant the stay, USPS could begin enforcing the barcode and portal requirements on ballots already in transit in some states, a scenario election officials in the coalition of suing states have said would be logistically unworkable this close to November 3. If the Court denies the stay or takes no action, the injunction stays in force and the rule remains shelved for this election cycle while the underlying case proceeds toward trial in Talwani's courtroom. Either way, a coalition of civil-rights and voting-rights groups represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Brennan Center for Justice and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund said in a statement after the appeals ruling that they expect the fight to continue past the midterms, regardless of how the emergency application is resolved.