A federal judge in Washington on Wednesday blocked the United States Postal Service from carrying out changes to its delivery of mail-in ballots, writing that recent policies directed by President Trump ran afoul of legal terms the agency accepted more than four years ago to ensure timely delivery of mail ballots.
In a brief opinion, Judge Emmet G. Sullivan pointed to a settlement agreement reached between the N.A.A.C.P. and the Postal Service in December 2021, after the group sued the government arguing that postal delays threatened to disenfranchise voters. At that time, the agency agreed to “prioritize monitoring and timely delivery of election mail.”
Judge Sullivan, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, wrote that the Postal Service’s proposal, which includes not delivering mail-in ballots in states that decline to hand over voter data to the federal government, violated the settlement agreement, which the parties had agreed would run through the 2028 election cycle.
Judge Sullivan wrote that Mr. Trump’s order appeared “designed to exert federal control over who in the United States may be sent a mail-in or absentee ballot in federal elections by the Postal Service.” He wrote that the agency had previously agreed to outline plans ahead of each national election and meet with the N.A.A.C.P. to explain how it would ensure efficient delivery of election-related mail.
While another judge in Washington had declined for now to halt the enforcement of the executive order because new rules for the Postal Service had not been finalized at the time, Judge Sullivan concluded that the agency’s recent proposal could be blocked preemptively because it would violate the prior agreement.
Last week, a judge in Massachusetts struck down the main components of Mr. Trump’s order, including the creation of lists of eligible voters and changes to mail-in voting. The ruling from Judge Indira Talwani stated that the Constitution granted authority over elections firmly to the states.
The N.A.A.C.P., which brought the lawsuit in 2020 amid a spike in voting by mail during the Covid-19 pandemic, had raised concerns about delays in mail delivery. The group argued that the new proposed changes raised fresh worries for coming elections. Among the changes it contested were the addition of new individualized bar codes on mail-in ballots and a plan to reject ballots from states that do not submit a list of eligible mail-in voters to the Postal Service ahead of time.
“The proposed U.S.P.S. changes would have created unnecessary and unlawful barriers, in direct violation of the U.S.P.S.’s mandate to prioritize election mail,” Anthony P. Ashton, the organization’s senior associate general counsel, said in a statement. “Those barriers could have disproportionately harmed Black voters, who are more likely to rely on mail voting due to longstanding inequities in access.”
“Put simply, the use of mail-in voting helps reduce voter intimidation at the polls and Election Day dirty tricks,” he added.
Postmaster General David Steiner has said on multiple occasions, including to The New York Times in April, that he would follow court orders governing voting by mail.
The agency had argued in filings before the decision that the court could not block the changes until it had finalized its rules and that the changes fell outside the scope of the legal settlement.
The Postal Service has not responded to multiple requests for comment after recent court decisions that partially blocked Mr. Trump’s mail voting executive order and the Postal Service’s proposal to impose it.
Under the 2021 settlement, the Postal Service agreed to take extra steps to expedite mail ballots for all even-year federal elections through 2028.
William Hensley, a former election mail specialist at the Postal Service who helped establish those “extraordinary measures” while at the agency, said in an interview that they can include dispatching delivery trucks on extra trips, authorizing local postmasters to pay out employee overtime, and in some cases postmarking and turning around mail ballots locally rather than at regional processing centers.
In this year’s midterm elections, the Postal Service said it will begin enforcing those measures on Oct. 27, roughly a week before the midterms.
