Trump administration turns to Supreme Court in battle over Postal Service mail ballot rules

The Justice Department on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to intervene in an ongoing legal battle over U.S. Postal Service rules for mail ballots just weeks before the November midterm elections and allow the agency to enforce them. 

In an emergency appeal to the high court, Solicitor General D. John Sauer requested the justices halt a district court’s temporary order blocking enforcement of the Postal Service requirements. 

That order, issued by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani last week, is set to remain in place for several more days. The Justice Department has appealed that decision, but the appeals court has not yet acted. 

Talwani is also considering a request for longer relief from two dozen Democratic-led states and voting rights groups challenging the legality of the mail-voting measures. She held a hearing earlier Thursday to consider their bid for a preliminary injunction. 

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who handles emergency appeals from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit, has asked the states to respond to the Trump administration’s request by Tuesday morning. 

Sauer wrote in his request to the high court that the Postal Service’s rule “imposes only modest envelope-design and addressee-information requirements for federal-election ballots sent.” 

“The Rule’s regulation of the U.S. Mail—not federal elections — is plainly constitutional,” he wrote. “While the States have primary authority to regulate the manner of elections, they cannot choose to use the federal mails to carry out their elections but then insist that their election-related mail is somehow exempt from the Postal Service’s rulemaking authority, conferred by Congress, to regulate envelope design and addressee information.”