U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani on Wednesday lifted an injunction that was the last bulwark against President Donald Trump’s order to let the federal government take over large parts of voting by mail. But the executive order is unlikely to remain unblocked for long.
Talwani wrote that the League of Women Voters’ complaint that led to the now-lifted injunction would likely be shot down by the Supreme Court on the same grounds that it turned back another challenge to the executive order on Monday: The agencies that the executive order directs to act hadn’t yet promulgated final rules based on the order, the conservative justices argued. That meant, they said, that when the complaints were filed, the question of whether the order would be enforced at all was still hypothetical.
The liberal Supreme Court justices — along with Talwani, based on her footnoting of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s scalding dissent — found this position to be so naive as to strain credulity.
But, fine: even playing by the Court majority’s pro-Trump rules, one of the agencies involved — the United States Postal Service — did produce a final rule last Friday. So the Court’s arguments that the challenges are coming too early no longer hold up.
So Talwani lifted her injunction on the League’s old complaint, which was also filed before the final USPS rule. But she did so without curtailing the League’s ability to immediately file a new complaint pointing to that final rule — which it could do as quickly as today.
“While Plaintiff Organizations have substantial arguments that might persuade the Supreme Court to reach a different result if Plaintiff Organizations have an opportunity to present them, this court is compelled by the Supreme Court’s ruling to grant Defendants’ Motion to Reconsider and vacate the preliminary injunction obtained by the Plaintiff Organizations,” she wrote. “This order is without prejudice to Plaintiff Organizations filing a new motion for a preliminary injunction after filing their anticipated Amended Complaint.”
In other, parallel cases challenging this same order, the plaintiffs have already filed amended complaints to circumvent the Supreme Court’s opposition. When the League does imminently, and reups its request for a preliminary injunction, Talwani will likely grant it.
The Supreme Court will be the final arbiter on whether Trump gets unprecedented leeway to mess with mail-in voting before the midterms. All of this procedural jockeying is leading up to that point.
Read the order here:
