Federal Judge Blocks Core of Trump's Mail-Voting Order, but Only for the States That Sued

A federal judge in Boston on Thursday blocked the central pieces of President Trump's plan to put the federal government in charge of who can vote by mail, ruling that setting voter eligibility belongs to the states and that no law gives the U.S. Postal Service power over mail ballots.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, who sits in the District of Massachusetts and was nominated by former President Barack Obama, issued a 37-page ruling that found the president lacked the constitutional authority to regulate state elections the way his March executive order tried to. She ordered the administration not to enforce the disputed provisions against the states that sued, and limited that order to this year's elections.

What the order directed

Trump signed the election order in March. It told federal agencies to build the machinery for federal oversight of mail voting. According to the order and reporting on it, the directives included:

• Have the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration assemble a nationwide list of verified U.S. citizens over 18, the people presumed eligible to vote in federal elections.
• Have the Postal Service set up a system to accept and deliver mail-in ballots only for voters who appear on preapproved lists.

The Postal Service, which operates independently of the administration, followed with proposed rules published in the Federal Register on June 2 that would use information from state election officials to build those voter lists. On Wednesday, the day before the ruling, Postmaster General David Steiner told lawmakers the agency would not deliver mail ballots for any state that refused to hand over its absentee voter list to the federal government.

What the judge ruled

Talwani found that the order ran into the part of the Constitution that assigns election rules to the states and Congress, not the president. She wrote that the federal government could not use the mail system to decide who receives a ballot.

No law enacted by Congress delegates authority to control mail-in voting to USPS.

She also wrote that the power to set voter eligibility sits with the states. "The Constitution reserves the power to determine voter eligibility to the States alone," the ruling said, according to Democracy Docket. "Neither the Executive Branch nor Congress may interfere with this power."

Who the ruling covers, and who it does not

The injunction applies to the 24 jurisdictions that brought the lawsuit: 23 states and the District of Columbia. The list runs through most Democratic-led states and several swing states, including Arizona, California, Michigan, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The Postal Service and the administration are barred from enforcing the blocked provisions against those jurisdictions for the 2026 elections.

States that did not join the suit are not covered by the order. And the relief is for this cycle only. Talwani granted the administration's request to dismiss the challenge as it applied to future elections, finding that part of the case was not yet ripe because the system is not in place.

What happens next

The administration is expected to appeal, according to NPR. A separate set of lawsuits over the same order is moving through the courts in Washington, D.C., where a different judge, Carl Nichols, declined in late May to block the order, reasoning that it was premature because the Postal Service had not yet acted. Democrats are appealing that decision. The Postal Service unveiled its proposed rules the day after Nichols ruled.

This is the second election order Trump has issued. The first, signed in March 2025, sought to require people to show proof of citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections and to restrict states from counting mail ballots that arrive after Election Day. Federal courts have blocked major portions of that order, including the proof-of-citizenship requirement.

The administration has described the order as an effort to make federal agencies enforce existing laws that bar noncitizens from voting. Talwani's ruling does not address whether noncitizens vote. It addresses who has the legal authority to run the process, and concludes that on mail voting, the answer is not the president or the Postal Service.