U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan blocked the Postal Service from implementing mail-in voting restrictions on Wednesday, finding that the USPS’s proposed rule violated a 2021 settlement with the NAACP that required expedited ballot delivery through 2028.
The decision, issued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, marks the second judicial defeat in as many weeks for President Trump’s effort to restrict mail-in voting ahead of the November midterm elections. Sullivan dismissed the Postal Service’s arguments defending the rule as “without merit,” according to Democracy Docket.
The USPS had proposed the contested rule on May 29 in response to a Trump executive order issued on March 31. Under the proposal, states would have been required to provide voter lists and adopt specific envelope designs before the Postal Service would deliver mail-in ballots—or face refusal of ballot delivery altogether, according to Reuters and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
The NAACP, represented by the Legal Defense Fund and Public Citizen Litigation Group, filed a motion in early June arguing that the proposed rule violated the 2021 settlement agreement. That settlement, reached after the NAACP sued the Postal Service during the 2020 election over mail delivery delays, required USPS to take “extraordinary measures” to ensure timely delivery of election mail, according to Reuters.
Sullivan’s ruling applies nationwide, blocking implementation of the USPS restrictions across all states. This differs from a federal court decision issued on June 25 by Judge Indira Talwani in Massachusetts, which blocked Trump’s executive order but applied only to the 23 Democratic-led states that had sued, Democracy Docket reported.
Sam Spital, Associate Director-Counsel of the Legal Defense Fund, said in a statement that the decision “recognizes that USPS cannot disregard its legal obligation to timely deliver mail-in ballots to all voters.” The NAACP’s Quiana-Joy Ochiagha added that “the proposed USPS changes would have created unnecessary and unlawful barriers” and warned that such barriers “could have disproportionately harmed Black voters, who are more likely to rely on mail voting due to longstanding inequities in access.”
The ruling comes as courts across the country have rejected multiple Trump administration attempts to reshape voting rules. Since last week, federal judges have blocked the administration’s bid to obtain voter rolls, barred its use of a citizenship-checking database, and permanently blocked a 2025 anti-voting executive order requiring documentary proof of citizenship for voter registration, according to Democracy Docket.
Sources
- Democracy Docket — reported Judge Sullivan’s ruling and nationwide scope; provided context on settlement and prior Massachusetts ruling
- Reuters — confirmed the ruling, judge’s name, the May 29 USPS proposal, and 2021 settlement terms
- CNN — reported the federal judge’s block of USPS implementation plan
- NAACP Legal Defense Fund — provided official statements from Spital, Ochiagha, and Allison Zieve; confirmed settlement agreement and rule details
