Judge Emmet Sullivan issued the Judge Sullivan USPS ballot ruling on Wednesday, granting the NAACP’s request to stop the U.S. Postal Service from carrying out Trump’s March executive order on mail voting nationwide. The order reaches every state and keeps the 2021 settlement’s election-mail protections in force through 2028.
USPS had posted a draft rule on May 29 to carry out the executive order, which would have tied mail-ballot delivery to states first handing over voter lists to the administration. Sullivan said that proposed rule clearly violated the settlement’s terms.
NAACP settlement terms
The dispute began in 2020, when mail delays threatened voters’ ability to cast ballots during COVID. The NAACP’s lawsuit produced a 2021 settlement that required USPS to safeguard mail-in voting in future federal elections and prioritize the timely delivery of election-related mail through 2028.
Last month, the NAACP asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to enforce that stipulation. Sullivan granted that request, giving the settlement the force it was written to carry and stopping USPS from moving ahead under Trump’s order.
USPS draft rule blocked
The court fight turned on the draft rule USPS posted on May 29. Under Trump’s March executive order, Postal Service mail ballots would have been delivered only after states first provided their voter lists to the administration.
Sullivan rejected USPS’s arguments as “without merit,” leaving the agency unable to implement the rule nationwide. For voters who depend on mailed ballots, the practical effect is that the settlement’s election-mail safeguards remain the governing rule, not the draft change USPS tried to advance.
Massachusetts ruling before Wednesday
The Wednesday order followed a ruling a week earlier from a federal judge in Massachusetts, who blocked implementation of Trump’s order for 23 Democratic-led states. The new decision goes farther, covering the entire nation instead of only the states that sued.
That leaves USPS bound by the 2021 settlement while the broader effort to reshape mail-voting rules continues to run into court blocks. The unresolved question is operational, not legal: what USPS would have had to change in its mail handling to carry out the draft rule was never laid out.
