A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., on Friday awarded the Trump administration a temporary victory in its attempt to strengthen federal oversight of elections.
A three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in a unanimous decision stayed a lower court decision that blocked the U.S. Postal Service’s attempt to restrict mail-in voting.
However, the Trump administration does not yet have the green light to move forward with the proposed rule. A separate judge in Massachusetts blocked the rule last month, and that injunction remains in place.
Department of Elections employees sort mail-in ballots for the California primary election at City Hall Tuesday, June 2, 2026, in San Francisco.
Jeff Chiu/AP Photo
At the heart of the cases is a proposed U.S. Postal Service rule that seeks to force states to create lists of approved voters and impose stricter rules on mail-in ballots.
Last month, Postmaster General David Steiner told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that under the proposed rule, the Postal Service would refuse to deliver mail-in ballots in states that do not turn over their voter rolls.
“Yes or no—if a state refuses to turn over its list of absentee voters to the federal government, will the Postal Service still mail its ballots under this proposed rule?” asked Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich.
“According to our proposed resolution, no. We will tell the state that we need a manifesto,” Steiner said.
The NAACP, which filed the lawsuit, previously sued the Postal Service in 2020, seeking to challenge delays in delivering mail-in ballots ahead of this year’s presidential election. The two sides reached an agreement in 2021, with the Postal Service agreeing to “prioritize…on-time delivery of election mail” in every national election through 2028.
In Friday’s ruling, the appeals court said the Trump administration is likely to succeed because the lawsuit is premature because the rule itself has not yet been finalized and is not covered by the 2021 agreement between the NAACP and the Postal Service.
The appeals court also said the Trump administration has demonstrated that it will be irreparably harmed if the Postal Service fails to finalize and implement the rule by the midterm deadlines.
“In this context, once the elections take place, “there will be no more redoing,” the resolution says.
While the Trump administration is unable to move forward with the new rule just yet, the D.C. Circuit Court’s decision signals that the Trump administration may be able to persuade other appeals courts to allow them to implement the policy while the cases work their way through the courts—perhaps after the November election.