US District Judge Indira Talwani on Wednesday canceled her earlier ruling granting a preliminary injunction to prevent the US Postal Service (USPS) from implementing President Trump’s mail-in voting executive order (EO) on or before this year’s midterm elections. This latest development in the tumultuous legal battle over the EO directly follows a request by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) to reconsider her earlier ruling after the Supreme Court issued an adverse decision in a separate lawsuit against the order.
The Supreme Court ruled Monday on a procedural issue in the suit Trump v. California, stating that the states bringing the challenge did not present an injury concrete or imminent enough to make their claim justiciable, meaning the Court could not hear the complaint. However, they have not yet ruled on any legal issues in the case.
Trump’s controversial mail-in voting EO was issued in late March, with the indicated intention to enhance election integrity and security. The EO directs the US Department of Homeland Security to generate “state citizenship lists” using federal immigration and naturalization data so that only individuals on the list will be issued an absentee ballot. The order has been sharply criticized by organizations such as the Brennan Center for Justice, which point to the unreliability of the data and potential to block eligible citizens from voting.
In Judge Talwani’s decision, she indicated that the Supreme Court believed her initial ruling came preliminarily, as the steps to carry out the effects of the EO had not yet been taken; USPS had not proposed or published their rule addressing their implementation methods at the time of the injunction. Despite the existence of Judge Talwani’s prior injunction barring them from doing so, USPS finalized its rule last week. It took effect on August 21.
Judge Talwani in her ruling cited the portion of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent in the Trump v. California decision, which states: “[I]f sowing chaos is the Government’s ultimate goal, as it is here… the effectiveness of judicial review is substantially undercut when the Court shunts all consideration of the lawfulness of the Government’s conduct at the stay stage and greenlights significant harms in the interim.”
Together, the decisions put the Trump administration one step closer to successfully implementing the EO. However, the order is expected to face continued legal challenges ahead of the November midterm elections.