A Clinton-appointed federal judge struck down President Donald Trump’s executive order tightening mail-in ballot rules Wednesday, blocking the U.S. Postal Service from enforcing eligibility checks before delivering election mail.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled the president’s directive violates a 2020 settlement agreement between the Postal Service and the NAACP. The decision is the latest instance of an unelected federal judge stepping in to halt executive action on election integrity, leaving the USPS bound by a consent decree with a left-wing advocacy group rather than the policies of the sitting administration.
Trump’s March executive order instructed the USPS to submit lists of voters slated to receive mail-in ballots and required the agency to refuse ballots for voters not recorded on those lists. The order also directed the Department of Homeland Security to compile lists of voting-age citizens from federal databases to cross-check state voter rolls—an effort to bring basic verification to a mail-in system expanded massively in 2020 and widely criticized for its vulnerabilities.
According to the Daily Caller, Sullivan argued the order violates paragraph 2 of the 2020 agreement, which requires the USPS to post documents reflecting "practices and policies for prioritizing the monitoring and timely delivery of Election Mail." Sullivan claimed the Postal Service cannot post these policies if they state the agency will not accept "noncompliant mailing" and therefore will not deliver mail-in or absentee ballots to some voters, or if it refuses to mail ballots in any state that "declines or fails to certify a list."
The 2020 agreement explicitly stated that the USPS retains discretion over "the substantive contents of any such documents posted." Yet Sullivan argued this discretion "does not give the Postal Service discretion to disseminate 'substantive contents' that are inconsistent with the Agreement as a whole"—effectively ruling that the NAACP settlement supersedes the executive branch's election security directives.
NAACP President Derrick Johnson celebrated the ruling, telling CNN it "marks another major blow to Donald Trump’s attempt to rig the election."
Neither the White House nor the USPS immediately responded to requests for comment on the ruling.
When a consent decree signed with an advocacy group can override a sitting president’s attempt to verify who receives a ballot, the real question isn’t who counts the votes—it’s who really writes the laws.
