The Trump administration has returned to the Supreme Court seeking emergency intervention to unblock its controversial postal voting order after a second district court ruling against it.
Judge Indira Talwani, a Massachusetts-based federal judge, has now blocked key aspects of Trump’s executive order on at least four separate occasions, consistently finding it lacks legal authority.
The executive order instructs the United States Postal Service to require states to upload voter lists and refuse ballot delivery to anyone whose citizenship cannot be verified.
Judge Talwani issued the most recent temporary restraining order on August 27, ruling that the Post Office has no role whatsoever in policing elections across the country.
That ruling came after the Supreme Court’s conservative majority had previously undermined her earlier orders, finding them unripe because the Postal Service had not yet issued a final rule at the time of the original challenge.
The challenge was brought by 24 states, the District of Columbia, and a coalition of civil rights groups led by the League of Women Voters.
Solicitor General John Sauer filed an emergency petition with the Supreme Court just hours after the latest hearing, before any written order had even been issued by the district court.
“The district court’s continued prejudgment of the rule is baseless, and an immediate stay is warranted,” Sauer wrote in the petition requesting an immediate administrative stay of the restraining order.
Judge Talwani has warned that the postal rule would see the USPS refusing to send mail ballots to eligible voters unless states submit ballot envelopes for advance approval, with the November 3, 2026 election deadline fast approaching.
The Supreme Court previously lifted an injunction Talwani imposed in June, with the justices splitting 6-3 along ideological lines, conservatives in the majority.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing in dissent at the time, stressed that the prior decision “does not address whether the President’s attempts to interfere with states’ administration of the November 2026 elections are lawful.”
Sotomayor also emphasised that the earlier ruling “does not suggest the Executive Branch has any constitutional or statutory authority to implement the directives” and “merely postpones adjudication of those challenges.”
The Department of Justice had signalled ahead of the latest hearing that it intended to escalate back to the Supreme Court, noting uncertainty about whether a temporary restraining order would even be directly appealable.
The case now places the Supreme Court’s conservative majority in the position of deciding the fate of mail ballot access weeks before a major national election.