Overview
- U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani issued a preliminary injunction on Friday that keeps core parts of the Postal Service’s new rule from taking effect through the November midterm elections.
- The final USPS rule would have required states to submit lists of mail‑ballot recipients to a federal portal and place unique barcodes on outbound and return envelopes and would have allowed USPS to withhold noncompliant ballots.
- The Justice Department and Solicitor General John Sauer immediately appealed Talwani’s order to the 1st U.S. Circuit Court and asked the U.S. Supreme Court for emergency relief to lift the block.
- Election officials told courts they cannot redesign ballots, reprint millions of envelopes, or upload voter data to a portal that the Postal Service said was not yet operational, and a whistleblower warned that portal design flaws could cause mass rejections.
- With North Carolina beginning to mail ballots under existing procedures, the injunction preserves current state systems for now and sets up a fast‑moving appellate fight that could reach the Supreme Court before Election Day.