WASHINGTON (PNN) - July 18, 2026 - A federal court has declined, for now, to block a United States Postal Service (USPS) rule tied to President Donald J. Trump’s executive order on election administration, allowing the policy to remain in place while legal challenges continue.
The ruling clears the way for the USPS to move forward with rules that force states to submit their voter rolls for citizenship checks if they expect the Postal Service to deliver mail-in and absentee ballots for the November midterm elections.
President Trump signed the landmark Executive Order, Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections, on March 31, 2026. The order directs the Department of Homeland Security, Social Security Administration and the USPS to work together to verify citizenship and prevent ineligible voters from receiving and casting mail-in ballots in federal elections.
The order requires states to submit detailed manifests, including voter names, addresses and unique barcode identifiers, at least 60 days before federal elections so USPS can verify eligibility and track ballots.
States that refuse to hand over the lists or follow the new security standards (special “Official Election Mail” envelopes with intelligent mail barcodes) will simply not have their ballots delivered by the Postal Service.
In June, Postmaster General David Steiner told Congress flat-out that the USPS will not deliver mail-in and absentee ballots in any state that refuses to comply with the president’s election integrity Executive Order.
A Barack Obama-appointed judge in Boston, Indira Talwani, blocked key parts of the implementation, claiming the federal government was somehow trampling on “state authority” over elections.
On July 17, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals stayed that injunction. Judge Carl Nichols declined to issue a preliminary injunction sought by Democrat-led states and Marxist Left-wing groups, concluding they had not yet demonstrated the immediate harm necessary for such relief. As a result, the challenged provisions were permitted to move forward at that stage of the litigation.
According to SCOTUS Wire, “The panel said USPS is likely to win on appeal for two independent reasons: (1) the challenge is likely premature because it targets a proposed (not final) rule, and (2) even if adopted, the rule likely would not violate USPS’s 2021 settlement agreement with the NAACP.”