Massachusetts Judge Indira Talwani said she was bound by a Supreme Court ruling from earlier this week.
A federal judge in Massachusetts on Aug. 26 lifted a block she ordered against postal service rules that limit mail-in voting.
She issued that block after the League of Women Voters challenged proposed U.S. Postal Service (USPS) rules that said states had to provide a list of voters who were eligible to receive mail-in ballots and had to get pre-approval for their ballot designs.
Her decision comes after the Supreme Court, in a separate case brought by multiple states, overturned a similar block she issued in June.
Judge Indira Talwani of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts wrote that although the plaintiffs have “substantial arguments that might persuade the Supreme Court to reach a different result,” after further argument, their decision on Aug. 24 “compelled” her to agree to the government’s motion to reconsider that block.
In its ruling, the Supreme Court said Talwani erred by blocking the USPS rules before they had been finalized, and before the states had shown they would suffer sufficient injury.
However, a few days before the Supreme Court decision came down, USPS issued finalized rules on Aug. 21.
That led Talwani to declare that USPS, by finalizing the rules, had violated her order in the League of Women Voters case, since the Supreme Court, in overturning her ruling, had addressed only the states’ lawsuit.
USPS officials said finalizing the rules didn’t violate Talwani’s order, because the agency promised not to implement it for the 2026 election unless the court orders were lifted.
“These arguments ignore the court’s explicit directive not to ‘initiat[e] or complet[e]’ rulemaking,” Talwani countered. “And Defendants cannot contend that they misunderstood the scope of the court’s order.”
The League of Women Voters asked Talwani to enforce her own order by declaring that the new USPS policy “has no force or effect with respect to any federal election on or before November 3, 2026.”
Talwani declined to make such a declaration or to penalize the government. She noted in her ruling that USPS’s decision to finalize the new policy, despite her order, may end up helping the plaintiffs in the case.
Since the rules are finalized, she said, the plaintiffs can amend their lawsuit and file again. And this time, the government cannot argue that the new rule is only “hypothetical.”
Tom Gantert contributed to this article.
