Twenty-three Democratic attorneys general and the District of Columbia filed suit against the U.S. Postal Service on Wednesday, challenging a rule that limits who can receive an absentee ballot in the mail.
They filed the complaint in the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts two days after the Supreme Court allowed President Trump’s executive order on mail-in voting to proceed while the underlying case continues.
The Supreme Court ruled that the states had sued before the order’s implementation, giving them a concrete rule to fight.
“The Court’s disposition of this application does not mean that any measure taken by the Government to implement the Order will necessarily be lawful. On that score, time will tell,” the majority wrote in its order.
The liberal wing of the court dissented.
"Today's decision does not address whether the President's attempts to interfere with States' administration of the November 2026 elections are lawful," Sotomayor wrote in her dissenting opinion.
"Nor does it suggest that the Executive Branch has any constitutional or statutory authority to implement the President's directives."
The Court did leave open a narrower path: a challenge grounded in the Postal Service’s actual rule rather than the order that spawned it. Wednesday's lawsuit takes that path.
Trump’s executive order requires the United States Postal Service to match every mail ballot against a federal list of eligible voters before b
