Appeals court blocks Trump’s mail voting overhaul ahead of midterm elections

A U.S. appeals court rejected the Justice Department’s request to let federal officials fully move ahead with Donald Trump’s overhaul of mail voting ahead of the November midterm elections, leaving in place a Boston judge’s order that declared the president’s policies unlawful.

A three-judge appellate panel said it would not pause a lower court ruling that barred federal agencies from immediately enforcing Trump’s executive order in almost two dozen states and the District of Columbia where Democratic officials sued.

Several other legal challenges are pending against the president’s directives, including a lawsuit brought by the Democratic National Committee and party leaders in Congress.

The Justice Department signalled in earlier court filings that it would consider taking the fight to the U.S. Supreme Court. While the Boston judge’s injunction doesn’t apply nationwide, it’s considered a significant impediment to the administration’s ability to carry out Trump’s executive order for the November vote.

The Justice Department said in a statement Sunday it’s “reviewing all options” and “remains confident that President Trump’s order to secure federal elections will ultimately be upheld.”

Advocates across the political spectrum are vying to swing election-related legal fights in their favour before November, when Republicans will defend tight margins of control in both chambers of Congress.

The majority of the panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit found that at this early stage of the case, the states that sued presented enough evidence that they were being harmed by the president’s actions and had standing to press their claims.

“All told, between the compressed timelines and anticipated changes to states’ election processes, the summary judgment record indicates that the EO has already ‘produced an incredible strain’ on state election officials and their teams,” Judges Gustavo Gelpí and Julie Rikelman wrote in a joint opinion, referring to Trump’s executive order. Both judges were appointed by former President Joe Biden.

Judge Joshua Dunlap, an appointee during Trump’s second term, partially dissented, writing that he would have allowed a section of the challenged order that directed the Department of Homeland Security to prepare a list of potentially eligible U.S. citizen voters as guidance for states, which run elections, to go ahead.

The California attorney general’s office, which led the coalition of states that sued, didn’t respond to a request for comment. A dozen Republican state attorneys general also intervened in the case in support of the president’s order.

The government argued that the Homeland Security list was intended to only serve as a resource to local jurisdictions. State officials who sued pointed to language in the executive order that appeared to threaten them with criminal prosecution if they didn’t use the federal lists to determine who is eligible to vote.

Postal Service

The president also ordered the U.S. Postal Service to revamp the design of election mail and to adopt rules that would require states to coordinate with the agency on its lists of residents poised to receive mail-in ballots. The states that sued argued this would unlawfully turn the postal service into an “elections regulator” and empower the agency to refuse to deliver ballots.

The administration and the president’s supporters are promoting the measures as safeguards against fraud. Democrats, voting rights organizations and others denounced the plan as an unlawful move to interfere with state management of congressional elections and to sow chaos and confusion beforehand to benefit Republicans.

In late June, the judge in Boston sided with the Democratic state officials who sued, declaring several sections of Trump’s order “unconstitutionally void” and blocking agencies from executing it in those jurisdictions ahead of the Nov. 3 election.

In the DNC’s case in Washington, a federal district judge entered an order in May refusing to block the executive action ahead of the November contest, finding it was premature because agencies hadn’t taken steps to implement it. Shortly after that decision, the Postal Service began the formal rulemaking process.

Democratic officials involved in that case have asked the DC Circuit to step in and block Trump’s directives before the Nov. 3 midterms.

The case is California v. Trump, 26-1774, U.S. Court of Appeals, 1st Circuit.