On July 17, 2026, a federal appeals court temporarily lifted a nationwide injunction that had blocked the Trump-backed Postal Service mail-ballot rule, letting the USPS continue advancing the rule while litigation proceeds. A district judge had blocked the proposal earlier in July; the three-judge panel paused that block.
The rule's mechanics reach deep into how states run mail voting. States would be required to submit voter data, names, addresses, and ballot identifiers, to a federal system. Every mail ballot would need a unique tracking barcode, and the Postal Service could refuse to deliver ballots that fail the new technical requirements.
The stakes are practical and dated. Implementation would have to land before ballot mailing begins in mid-September, compressing an infrastructure change into weeks. Ballots with missing barcodes or mismatched records could be delayed or rejected, with the burden falling hardest on elderly, disabled, and rural voters, and the rule shifts a piece of election administration from states to a federal agency answerable to the president. The ruling is temporary and the challenges continue, but the clock now runs in the administration's favor. This is the mail-in piece of the machinery Trump demanded in his primetime address (see Trump's Primetime Address Claims China and the 'Deep State' Rigged 2020. His Own Declassified Documents Show Russia Was the One Helping Him and Trump Fires the Last Members of the Bipartisan Election Assistance Commission, Leaving It Unable to Act Before the Midterms).
On August 11, 2026, a federal judge in Massachusetts issued a preliminary injunction barring USPS from implementing Section 3 of the March 2026 mail-voting executive order for the November elections, finding the provision likely unconstitutional.
Ten days later, on August 21, USPS issued its final rule implementing that same section, effective immediately. The rule says it will be implemented “immediately” for the November elections if the injunctive orders against Section 3 are lifted.
Plaintiffs in League of Women Voters of Massachusetts v. Trump filed a motion to enforce the court's order, arguing the rule defies a block on both “implementing” Section 3 and “completing rulemaking” ahead of the November 3 election. They asked the court to confirm the rule “has no force or effect” before November and to require that USPS take “no implementation or preparatory steps” this year.
The sequence is the point. Finalising a rule a court has enjoined does not put it into effect, but it does mean the rule is sitting ready to switch on the moment an appellate court lifts the block, with ballot mailing beginning in mid-September.
On August 24, 2026, the Supreme Court lifted Judge Talwani's earlier June injunction, the one covering the 23 states and D.C. that sued, by a 6-3 vote. It did so on standing grounds, holding that those states had sued too soon, and expressly noted that its ruling does not mean any implementing measure will be lawful.
Her August 11 nationwide injunction, the one that reaches this USPS rule, was not before the Court and remains in force. USPS has said it will not implement the rule for November without Supreme Court clearance, and election law professor Rick Hasen expects the trial court to amend the surviving injunction to bar implementation of the now-final rule outright.
In the days after the Supreme Court ruling, the objection shifted from the legal to the operational. The rule requires election officials to submit each mail voter's name and address to a new USPS portal, along with unique Intelligent Mail barcodes assigned to the envelopes used to send and return that voter's ballot. Postal officials and election administrators warned that the timing invites mismatched barcodes, incomplete records, technical failures and confusion across thousands of local election offices, any of which could stop an eligible voter from receiving a ballot.
On August 26 states sued to block the rule. USPS still cannot implement it for the November 3 election, because the separate nationwide injunction was not affected by the Supreme Court's decision.
On August 27, 2026, Judge Talwani granted a temporary restraining order blocking the final rule for 14 days, in the case brought by the League of Women Voters and in a parallel case brought by a coalition of states. She found the challengers likely to win on the merits: the rule is likely unconstitutional, and USPS likely lacked the authority to issue it at all.
Two findings carry the ruling. On evidence, Talwani noted the administration had not offered “any evidence regarding fraudulent absentee or mail-in voting,” and wrote that the government's interest in “correcting an unsubstantiated problem through likely unconstitutional means is dwarfed by the overwhelming risk of pervasive disenfranchisement.” On timing, she found the states “have neither time nor funds” to design and print new ballots, update election management systems, train staff on the USPS portal and upload voter data before the midterms, and noted the administration offered “no reply” to the states' assertion that compliance would be impossible for many of them.
This is the outcome election law professor Rick Hasen predicted three days earlier, immediately after the Supreme Court ruling: that the trial court would respond by blocking the now-final rule outright. A hearing on a longer-lasting preliminary injunction is set for September 3.
One piece of the executive order is untouched. The provision requiring the Department of Homeland Security to compile lists of eligible voters and send them to the states remains in effect.