Judge blocks USPS rule that would have withheld delivery of some mail ballots
Federal District Judge Emmet Sullivan in Washington on July 1 sided with the NAACP against a proposed US Postal Service rule on mail-in ballots, Al Jazeera reports . Sullivan found the rule would likely violate a 2021 legal settlement that committed the USPS to “extraordinary measures” ensuring timely delivery of election mail, and granted the NAACP’s motion to enforce that agreement.
The rule, put forward in May, would have required states to give the Postal Service lists of absentee and mail-in voters; ballots not matching those lists could be returned rather than delivered. It also mandated new envelope designs with specific logo and barcode placements, with non-compliant mail subject to non-delivery. The measure grew out of a March executive order titled “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections.”
The ruling matters because of timing and mechanism. It arrives less than five months before the November midterms that will decide control of Congress, and it turns on contract enforcement rather than a broad constitutional holding — the court is binding the Postal Service to commitments it already made, which is a narrower and more durable basis than a novel legal theory. The administration can appeal, but the practical effect is that the delivery conditions do not take effect for now.