US Postal Service cannot carry out Trump order on mail ballot delivery, judge rules
a federal judge Blocked the US Postal Service President Donald Trump’s vote-by-mail executive order blocked him from implementing his plan, finding that the proposal violated an agreement in a 2020 lawsuit against the agency.
Embers had referred USPS transmitting ballots only for states that reference agency lists of mail-in voters and meet other requirements of vote-by-mail programs. A judge in Boston had previously stopped the Postal Service from enforcing the order for two dozen states that challenged the ruling in court. But a new ruling by U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan of Washington, D.C., blocks the directives nationwide.
If the courts allow Trump’s March 2026 order to stand, it would give the federal government a right to do so. An unprecedented role in elections — and could put even more voter data into the hands of Trump officials investigating alleged election fraud.
Sullivan’s order stems from a lawsuit the NAACP first filed against the Postal Service in 2020 over policy changes that slowed mail delivery as the pandemic election approached. A 2021 agreement required the agency to issue guidance documents detailing how it would prioritize “tracking and timely delivery of Election Mail.” Part of the agreement gave the court authority to oversee USPS’s actions in this matter.
Sullivan wrote: Wednesday view Under the agency’s proposed regulations for implementing the Trump executive order, ballots would not be delivered to voters if the ballots did not comply with the requirements of the executive order, he said.
“The Proposed Rule violates paragraph 2 of the Agreement because the Postal Service cannot release documents reflecting ‘practices and policies prioritizing the tracking and timely delivery of Election Mail’ if its policies provide that it will not accept ‘non-conforming mailing’ and therefore will not deliver mail-in or absentee ballots to some voters and cannot mail ballots to any voters in a state where the state has ‘rejected or certified a list.'” Sullivan said.
Trump’s order would also require mail-in ballots to have personalized barcodes for automatic tracking. This policy is considered a best practice for election administration, but it is one that many jurisdictions will face difficulties implementing due to the cost of such a change.
It also instructs the Department of Homeland Security to use federal databases to create lists of voting-age citizens in each state, raising fears that the lists will be used for overly aggressive voter purges.
“This ruling in favor of the NAACP lawsuit marks another major blow against Donald Trump’s attempt to rig the election,” said NAACP President Derrick Johnson. “The president fails and the people win.”
CNN has reached out to USPS for comment on the new decision.
This story has been updated with additional details.
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