2-1 panel says states face ‘rapidly approaching deadlines’
The Boston-based appeals court rejected the administration’s request to lift an injunction that a coalition of Democratic-led states secured on June 25 from Talwani, who concluded that key parts of Trump’s order were likely unconstitutional. The coalition, led by California, Massachusetts, Nevada and Washington state, includes 23 states and the District of Columbia.
The Justice Department argued that because government agencies had not yet finalized actions and policies to implement Trump’s directive, any lawsuit challenging the order was premature. The appeals panel rejected that argument.
“As the district court reasoned, the [executive order] lays out a clear set of rapidly approaching deadlines by which states must coordinate with federal officials and comply with new voting procedures — all while the states must also ensure that their officials and the public understand the evolving set of rules that would govern the upcoming September and November elections,” the judges wrote. “The Plaintiff States have no practical choice but to respond to the [order] now.”
The Justice Department warned that absent a ruling in its favor, it may ask the Supreme Court to intervene.
Talwani, an Obama appointee, ruled that the president lacked authority to direct the Department of Homeland Security to compile voter eligibility lists for each state to use. She also said the U.S. Postal Service had no statutory authorization to adopt binding regulations on mail-in voting, and that Trump could not use the order “to intimidate local election officials to use the necessarily incomplete confirmed citizenship lists as a resource, lest they face criminal prosecution.”
Trump signed the executive order in March after years of calling for tighter rules on voting by mail and repeating his claim that his 2020 election defeat resulted from widespread voter fraud. Under the U.S. Constitution, states administer federal elections.
The March order directed DHS to compile and transmit to states a list of confirmed U.S. citizens eligible to vote, derived from citizenship and naturalization records and other federal databases. It required USPS to deliver ballots only to voters on each state’s approved mail-in ballot list — a directive the Postal Service recently moved to implement by issuing proposed rules requiring states to provide names and barcodes tied to their mail-in ballots. Before Talwani ruled, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., rejected a related effort by Democrats to block Trump’s order on similar grounds.
The order also directed the Justice Department to prioritize the investigation and prosecution of state and local election officials who issue federal ballots to people deemed “not eligible” to vote.
Judges have also blocked an earlier Trump executive order requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote and restricting the counting of mail-in ballots. Trump has made winning approval in Congress of a package of voting restrictions called the Save America Act a priority.