After the Supreme Court threw out the injunction against Trump’s executive order on noncitizen mail-in ballots, you might have thought the case was over.
After the Supreme Court on Monday threw out the injunction against Donald Trump’s executive order on noncitizen mail-in ballots, you might have thought that the case was over. After all, the Court didn’t just rule that the injunction was mistaken; it ruled that no party before Judge Indira Talwani of the District of Massachusetts had standing and a ripe claim against the EO. In other words, Judge Talwani had no power under Article III to do anything about the EO. That’s not the end of the story, because aspects of the EO dictating what mail can be carried are unconstitutional: Only Congress, not the president, can decree that. But it’s the end of the federal judicial case or controversy unless and until there is actually a Postal Service regulation that imposes some burden on the states or another proper plaintiff.
If you thought that, dear reader, you underestimated the anti-Trump zealotry of Judge Talwani. On Tuesday, the day after the Supreme Court ruled that she had no judicial power to enjoin the EO, Judge Talwani issued an order in a companion case taking the Postal Service to task for daring to publish a draft set of proposed regulations in the Federal Register while she had enjoined the USPS from even “initiating . . . rulemaking” to implement the EO.
Technically, of course, this is a different case with different parties. But it is hard to see how the Court’s conclusions about standing and ripeness are any different here. Moreover, Judge Talwani fumes that the defendants were misleading the Supreme Court, a charge that assumes the two lawsuits are connected (as indeed they are, given that the USPS is carrying out the EO):
Defendants feigned complete compliance with the California v. Trump injunction in their July 27, 2026 request to the Supreme Court for an emergency stay in that case. There, Defendants lamented the passing of “every day that the agencies are unable to take steps to carry out the Executive Order as to the November 2026 election[.]”…See Appl. for Stay 28, Trump v. California, No. 26A124 (U.S. July 27, 2026).
If the injunction in the California case covered the USPS taking steps to propose regulations (and Judge Talwani writes as if it did), and if this case is ultimately about the EO (and Judge Talwani writes that “the court understands from prior filings that Plaintiffs are not challenging the Final Rule, but the EO itself”) — then she really ought to think twice about further legal proceedings to enforce that ruling after it was found by the highest court in the land to be outside of her power as a district judge. But not Judge Talwani! Worse, in the section on the consequences, she tries to evade appellate review by saying she “imposes no remedy other than identifying the violation” but adds some advice for the plaintiffs on how to keep suing the USPS and the Trump administration: “Defendants’ violation of the court’s order may ultimately inure to Plaintiffs’ benefit, where, now that a Final Rule has issued despite the pendency of the injunction, Plaintiffs could choose to file an amended complaint reasserting their current, non-APA claims, but noting that the issuance of a Final Rule is no longer hypothetical.”
This is a shameful piece of judicial defiance and partisanship all around. Now, the Trump team is engaging in some sharp practice by developing and publishing a proposed regulation while under an order not to do so, while complaining to the Supreme Court about the unreasonableness of such an order. On the other hand, the USPS proposed rule explicitly recites that it won’t go into effect unless and until the lawsuit is resolved. And really, it’s a highly improper abuse of the judicial power to bar the executive branch from even planning or proposing steps it wants to take, rather than simply enjoining the executive from carrying out steps the court concludes to be unlawful. As in the Planned Parenthood litigation, in which Judge Talwani did everything possible to run out the clock on the funding ban, she’s clearly trying to make it practically impossible for the Postal Service to implement new rules even if it can convince the appeals courts that it has the legal power to do so. Depriving the United States government of the practical right to appeal is in no way a proper use of the judicial power.