Judge to hear challenge to Trump mail-in voting restrictions before midterms

A federal judge in Boston is weighing whether President Donald Trump’s mail-in voting order can survive long enough to reshape the midterm election cycle, or whether states will keep control of how absentee ballots are sent, tracked and counted.

In the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, Judge Indira Talwani is hearing a challenge filed by the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts, the League of Women Voters, the Association of Americans Resident Overseas, U.S. Vote Foundation, OCA – Asian Pacific American Advocates and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. The groups, backed by the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Massachusetts, Brennan Center for Justice, Legal Defense Fund, Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC and LatinoJustice PRLDEF, argue that Trump’s order exceeds presidential power because states administer elections under the U.S. system.

Trump signed Executive Order 14399 on March 31. Titled “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections,” it was published in the Federal Register on April 3, 2026, and cites the Help America Vote Act, the National Voter Registration Act and the Constitution’s guarantee of a republican form of government as authority. The order directs the administration to compile a list of confirmed U.S. citizens eligible to vote in each state, use federal data to help local officials verify eligibility, and require the Postal Service to deliver ballots only to voters on each state’s approved mail-in ballot list. It also calls for election records to be preserved for five years.

The plaintiffs warn that the order would force states to overhaul election systems on a compressed timeline and could create confusion, chaos and disenfranchisement if it takes effect. The ACLU has said the federal databases used for citizenship verification are out of date and unreliable. It also argues the order tries to turn the Postal Service from a neutral mail carrier into an arbiter of who may cast a ballot by mail.

The Postal Service has already moved toward implementation through proposed rules that would require states to provide voter names, addresses and unique barcodes tied to outbound and return ballot envelopes for federal elections. CNBC reported the proposal would create state-specific “Mail-In and Absentee Participation Lists” and a new Federal Ballot Mail Portal, and would apply to general, special and runoff federal elections, but not primaries or ballots for military and overseas voters. USPS said the rule would help officials compare ballots mailed with ballots returned to detect possible problems.

The Boston case comes after Judge Carl Nichols in Washington, D.C., refused on May 28 to issue an immediate injunction in a separate challenge, saying it was premature because the order had not yet been implemented. Nichols noted that the executive order gave USPS 60 days to propose new rules. The Brennan Center says Trump’s March 31 directive is his second elections-related executive order, and that three courts blocked his first one, finding that the Constitution gives election authority to the states and Congress, not the president.

For voters who rely on mail ballots, and for election administrators already bracing for another hard-fought cycle, the fight now turns on a basic question with immediate consequences: whether the White House can rewrite voting rules, or whether that power still belongs to the states and the courts.