A cluster of veteran legal advocacy groups has expanded its fight against President Trump’s election orders, with multiple lawsuits challenging voting restrictions that Trump’s administration argues are necessary for election security, but which voting rights organizations contend will disenfranchise millions of Americans ahead of the November 2026 midterms.
The Democracy Defenders Fund and the Campaign Legal Center have jointly filed lawsuits against Trump’s 2025 and 2026 executive orders on voting, according to The Guardian. These legal outfits have already won key lawsuits on election issues, thwarting Trump’s moves on voting rights and other policies.
On September 4, 2026, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani issued a permanent injunction blocking the Trump administration’s mail-voting restrictions. Talwani wrote that implementing the order “threatens disenfranchisement of millions of United States citizens who seek to vote by mail,” and stressed that “the record includes no evidence relating to fraudulent mail voting to support the rushed implementation,” according to The Guardian.
In response, the Department of Justice’s solicitor general John Sauer appealed to the Supreme Court on September 6, 2026, urging it to permit the new U.S. Postal Service rules to go into effect. Sauer argued that the order “does not seize control of states’ administration of elections — it simply imposes reasonable preparation requirements for certain election-related mail,” The Guardian reported.
The legal landscape reflects a broader pattern. The American Civil Liberties Union has been involved in 26 of 30 legal challenges to the Trump administration on voting data issues, and the administration has lost 23 cases where rulings have been made, according to The Guardian. Sophia Lin Lakin, who leads the ACLU Voting Rights Project, said the group has been “pushing back” on administration efforts to seize personal voting data from states.
Other groups accelerating their legal challenges include the Brennan Center for Justice, Democracy Forward, the Democratic Attorneys General Association, and the Washington Litigation Group. In late August, 24 Democratic attorney generals and other plaintiffs won a temporary restraining order from Judge Talwani in Massachusetts blocking the U.S. Postal Service from moving forward with rules to curb mail voting.
Anna Baldwin, director of voting rights litigation at the Campaign Legal Center and a former Justice Department civil rights attorney, told The Guardian that the CLC and Democracy Defenders Fund have “worked together in federal cases filed in Oregon and California to make sure that the DoJ isn’t able to seize voters’ sensitive data by making false claims about non-citizen voting.” She said the groups are “pushing back on the DoJ’s lawless efforts to vacuum up and aggregate sensitive data to create a national voter file of some sort.”
Norm Eisen, executive chair of the Democracy Defenders Fund, told The Guardian that since its inception the organization has been involved in more than 300 legal cases and matters in three primary areas: elections, the rule of law, and anti-corruption. Eisen said the group works in conjunction with other nonpartisan organizations like the Campaign Legal Center and the Washington Litigation Group because “they both have strong bipartisan credibility.”
About 50 million Americans, the majority of whom are Democrats, vote by mail, according to reports cited by The Guardian. A whistleblower complaint released by Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut alleged that the USPS has been proceeding with a “secretive, rushed” effort to implement Trump’s order that could lead to operational challenges with this year’s mail-in voting.
The Supreme Court on August 24, 2026, allowed portions of Trump’s mail-voting restrictions to move forward pending additional challenges. However, legal experts and advocacy groups argue that the order exceeds the president’s constitutional authority, which vests power over elections in the states and Congress.
Sources
- The Guardian — reported on advocacy group legal challenges, Judge Talwani’s injunction, the DOJ’s Supreme Court appeal, ACLU litigation record, and expert commentary from legal leaders
- SCOTUS Blog — confirmed Supreme Court’s August 24, 2026 decision allowing portions of Trump’s order to move forward
- Campaign Legal Center — confirmed lawsuits against Trump’s 2025 and 2026 executive orders on voting
- PBS NewsHour — reported on Judge Talwani’s August 28, 2026 temporary restraining order blocking the government from implementing the order
