FROM: Elias Law Group LLP
Late last night, in DSCC v. Trump, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia issued a nationwide preliminary injunction against the final United States Postal Service (“USPS”) mail in voting rule. This is the first and only court order to block the entirety of the rule, preventing voluntary compliance by Republican states. The order therefore helps stop Republican-led states from working with the federal government to disenfranchise mass numbers of mail voters via USPS before the 2026 election.
Back in March, President Trump signed Executive Order No. 14,399, which instructed USPS to promulgate a rule to dramatically change how mail in voting works in this county. The final USPS rule implementing President Trump’s command required absentee and mail-in ballots for the upcoming midterm elections be transmitted: (i) only to voters who are verified by the Postal Service to have been enrolled by state officials on its “Mail-in and Absentee Participant Lists” and; (ii) only using envelopes that meet federally-mandated design specifications, including a bar code that allows individual ballots to be tracked. Left unchecked, this rule would have put the USPS—not the states—in charge of ultimately deciding if a voter would receive a mail ballot. Worse, USPS was poised to do so using completely untested technology and by forcing states to re-design their mail ballot envelopes on the eve of the Election, putting millions of Americans that vote by mail at risk of being disenfranchised.
But, by blocking the entirety of the Postal Service’s rule, the Court order prevents these catastrophic harms. In granting the preliminary injunction, the Court made clear that the Postal Service lacks the authority to impose brand new election procedures on state officials and to refuse the transmission of ballots that fail to meet those procedures. In the Court’s words, the “key portions of the Rule exceed any conception of the outer bounds” of USPS’s authority.
Last night’s order is an enormous victory for voters across the country who wish to cast their ballot by mail in the upcoming midterm elections using the secure procedures already in place within their states. Elias Law Group is proud to represent the Democratic National Committee, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Democratic Governors Association and Leaders Schumer and Jeffries in this critical litigation.