A federal appeals court on Saturday refused to let the Trump administration move forward with a presidential executive order designed to tighten mail-in voting rules in 23 states before November’s congressional elections.
The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Boston, turned down the administration’s request to set aside an injunction that a group of Democratic-led states had obtained on June 25 from a lower court judge. That judge had determined that major portions of President Trump’s executive order violated the Constitution.
The U.S. Department of Justice had asked the appeals court to put U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani’s ruling on hold while it pursues an appeal. The Justice Department argued that since federal agencies had not yet completed the steps needed to carry out Trump’s directive, any legal challenge to it was too early to be heard in court.
The appeals court rejected that reasoning in a 2-1 decision.
“As the district court reasoned, 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,” the judges wrote. “The Plaintiff States have no practical choice but to respond to the (order) now.”
Prior to Judge Talwani’s ruling, a separate federal judge in Washington, D.C., had turned away a similar attempt by Democrats to stop Trump’s order on comparable grounds. The Justice Department has warned that if the 1st Circuit did not rule in its favor, it might have to take the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Trump originally signed the executive order in March, following years of pushing for stricter mail-in voting rules and repeatedly advancing the false claim that widespread voter fraud caused his 2020 presidential election loss. Under the U.S. Constitution, the responsibility for running federal elections falls to individual states.
That order was part of a broader effort by Trump to reshape how elections are conducted. He has also made passing the SAVE America Act — a contentious package of voting restrictions — a top legislative priority. Courts have already blocked a separate executive order he signed that would have required proof of citizenship to register to vote and limited the counting of mail-in ballots.
The March order instructed the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to put together and send to each state a list of confirmed U.S. citizens eligible to vote, drawing from citizenship, naturalization, and other federal records.
The order also required the U.S. Postal Service to deliver ballots only to voters appearing on each state’s approved mail-in ballot list. The Postal Service had recently moved to carry out that directive by proposing new rules requiring states to submit voter names and barcodes linked to their mail-in ballots.
Additionally, the order directed the U.S. Department of Justice to make it a priority to investigate and prosecute state and local election officials who send federal ballots to individuals considered “not eligible” to vote.
Judge Talwani sided with a coalition of 23 states and the District of Columbia, led by California, Massachusetts, Nevada, and Washington state. She ruled that the president had no authority to order the Department of Homeland Security to compile voter eligibility lists for states to use, and that the Postal Service had no legal basis to issue binding regulations on mail-in voting.
The judge, who was appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama, also ruled that Trump could not use the executive order “to intimidate local election officials to use the necessarily incomplete confirmed citizenship lists as a resource, lest they face criminal prosecution.”
