A federal appeals court on Saturday refused to let Donald Trump's administration impose new mail-in voting rules in 23 states, leaving in place an injunction that several Democratic-led states won on June 25. The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1, stopping a presidential order that would have forced states to scramble around rapidly approaching deadlines while federal agencies rewrote the rules from above.
The judges said the executive order "lays out a clear set of rapidly approaching deadlines by which states must coordinate with federal officials and comply with new voting procedures — all while the states must also ensure that their officials and the public understand the evolving set of rules that would govern the upcoming September and November elections." They added, "The Plaintiff States have no practical choice but to respond to the (order) now."
Who Gets Forced to Move
That line says plenty. The states were the ones left carrying the burden, even as the White House tried to dictate the terms of how elections would run. The order didn't just ask for cooperation. It demanded compliance on a deadline, with the machinery of federal power pressing down on state election systems and the public expected to absorb the confusion.
The Justice Department argued the lawsuit came too early because agencies had not yet finalized the policies needed to carry out Trump's directive. Before U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani ruled, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., had already rejected a related Democratic effort to block the order on similar grounds. The Justice Department then warned that if the 1st Circuit didn't side with it, the administration might go to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Trump signed the executive order in March after years of calling for tighter rules on voting by mail and pushing the false claim that his 2020 election defeat was the result of widespread voter fraud. Under the U.S. Constitution, states are assigned the role of administering federal elections. The order landed on top of other efforts by Trump to overhaul elections, including his push for congressional approval of the SAVE America Act, a divisive package of voting restrictions. Judges have already blocked an earlier executive order requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote and restricting the counting of mail ballots.
What the Order Tried to Do
The March directive told the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to compile and send states a list of confirmed U.S. citizens eligible to vote in each state, using citizenship and naturalization records and other federal databases. It also ordered the U.S. Postal Service to deliver ballots only to voters on each state's approved mail-in ballot list. USPS recently moved to carry out that directive by issuing new proposed rules requiring states to provide the names and barcodes tied to their mail-in ballots.
The order went further still. It directed the U.S. Department of Justice to prioritize the investigation and prosecution of state and local election officials who issue federal ballots to people deemed "not eligible" to vote. That kind of threat hangs over the people actually running elections at the local level, where the work gets done and where the consequences land first.
Talwani, siding with a coalition of 23 states and the District of Columbia led by California, Massachusetts, Nevada and Washington state, said Trump lacked authority to direct DHS to compile voter eligibility lists for each state to use. She also said USPS had no statutory authorization to adopt any binding regulations on mail-in voting. Talwani, who was appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama, said Trump also could not use the order "to intimidate local election officials to use the necessarily incomplete confirmed citizenship lists as a resource, lest they face criminal prosecution."
The Courtroom as the Last Gatekeeper
The 2-1 ruling shows the familiar setup: one branch of the state tries to seize more control, another branch steps in to slow it down, and ordinary people are left watching institutions fight over who gets to command the process. The administration's lawyers said the challenge was premature. The states said the order was already forcing action. The court agreed with the states, at least for now.
Trump's broader campaign against mail voting didn't begin with this order, and it didn't end there either. He has made winning approval in Congress for the SAVE America Act a priority, while judges have blocked earlier efforts to require proof of citizenship and restrict mail ballots. The pattern is plain enough. The apparatus keeps reaching for tighter control over how people vote, and the resistance comes through lawsuits, injunctions, and court orders instead of anything resembling public control over the process.
For now, the appeals court has kept the injunction in place. The administration wanted the order alive in 23 states. The court said no.