The battle over President Donald Trump's attack on voting by mail continued on Wednesday, as a federal judge in Massachusetts lifted her injunction on the Republican's March executive order and the coalition behind that case took action against a related US Postal Service rule.
Despite repeatedly voting by mail himself, Trump ordered various federal actions to restrict participation in elections, including the creation of the rule that the USPS finalized last week amid various ongoing legal fights. Among them is the case in Boston, under US District Judge Indira Talwani, an appointee of former Democratic President Barack Obama.
Talwani on Tuesday found that the Trump administration violated her injunction by finalizing the Postal Service rule, but she declined to take any action. Then, on Wednesday, she lifted her injunction—which, as MS NOW noted, "was the only remaining roadblock to implementing the executive order."
The judge cited the US Supreme Court's Monday ruling in a separate case brought by Democratic state attorneys general. Rather than weighing the constitutionality of Trump's order, the six right-wing justices ruled that AGs had filed their lawsuit prematurely and lifted another lower court's injunction.
Refusing to back down, the Democratic AGs on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against the newly finalized USPS rule—following in the footsteps of other Democratic Party leaders and a "pro-voter" coalition that filed separate challenges to the policy on Tuesday.
The coalition that had compelled Talwani to issue her injunction also took aim at the USPS rule on Wednesday, submitting to her court a supplemental complaint as well as a request for a new injunction blocking the policy for the November midterms.
"The court has already found that the executive order unconstitutionally usurps the authority of the states and Congress to regulate elections, and the newly finalized rule eliminates any doubt about the harms stemming from these unlawful acts," the groups and their attorneys said in a joint statement.
"Implementing the newly finalized rule less than 70 days before the general election would dramatically impair plaintiffs' core voter engagement work and pose a grave risk of disenfranchisement," they added. "We are asking the court for emergency relief to prevent this harm and to affirm the public’s confidence in the systems voters rely on to conduct our elections."
The plaintiffs are the Association of Americans Resident Overseas, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, League of Women Voters, LWV of Massachusetts, OCA - Asian Pacific American Advocates, and US Vote Foundation. They are represented by the state and national ACLU, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, Brennan Center for Justice, LatinoJustice PRLDEF, and Legal Defense Fund.
"USPS's decision to rush this blatantly unconstitutional rule into effect just weeks before an election is the latest step in a rollout that has sown confusion at every turn and now threatens to disenfranchise voters who did everything right. This is chaos by design, and voters are the ones who will pay for it," declared Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the ACLU's Voting Rights Project.
"No administration should be able to manufacture confusion around how we vote and undermine confidence in our elections in the process," she added. "Rather than serving voters, this rule threatens access to the ballot and treats voters as collateral damage. We will continue to use every legal tool available to block this illegal power grab and ensure voters can cast mail ballots with the confidence that their votes will be counted."
