Republican Officials in 12 States Appeal to Revive Trump Mail-Voting Restrictions for 2028

Voting in this year's midterm elections in the United States has only just concluded. But the legal fight over how votes will be cast in the 2028 presidential election has already begun.

Republican attorneys general from 12 states have moved to revive President Donald Trump's push to restrict mail-in voting. They have begun the process of appealing a court order that blocked the U.S. Postal Service from carrying out a revised ballot rule.

The appeal process, which began on Thursday, targets a September order by U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols. Nichols was one of two judges who blocked the Postal Service from carrying out a plan released in response to an executive order by President Trump.

The attorneys general bringing the appeal represent Alabama, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and Texas. It is not clear, however, how long some of these states will continue the case, given that Democrats won up and down the ballot in the midterms. In Texas and Kansas, Democratic candidates are set to take control of their states' attorney general's offices in January.

In September, the Supreme Court refused to pause a similar ruling by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, who is based in Boston. Talwani's order stopped the Postal Service from working on its revised rule for federal ballot mail, but it applied only to this year's midterm elections.

Nichols' preliminary injunction, by contrast, blocks the Postal Service from implementing the plan for all federal elections, including the 2028 race.

It is not clear whether the Trump administration plans to appeal Nichols' ruling by Friday's deadline for filing a court notice. Asked about the Justice Department's plans, spokesperson Matthew Tragesser replied in an email that the department does not comment on ongoing litigation.

At the centre of the dispute is the rule the Postal Service released in late August. Under that rule, states would have been required to turn over lists of voters' names and addresses in order to have their ballots delivered by the Postal Service.

Nichols, a Washington, D.C.-based judge nominated by Trump, found that the mailing agency likely has no power to impose that requirement on states. 'As the Government concedes, the Postal Service could issue (and enforce) the Rule only if Congress gave it the authority to do so, but here no statute grants the Postal Service the power to issue key parts of the Rule,' Nichols wrote.

The administration's earlier push to put the restrictions in place for the midterms alarmed many election officials, who feared last-minute changes would cause major disruptions for the tens of millions of people who regularly vote by mail. Some voters with disabilities and those in places without polling sites, they feared, could have lost the ability to cast a ballot altogether.

A whistleblower report claimed that the online system officials would have needed to use to follow the revised ballot requirements had not been properly tested. It said the system could have resulted in many eligible voters not getting their mail-in ballots in time, or not getting them at all.

While the Supreme Court ultimately stopped implementation of the Postal Service rule for the midterms, Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented from that ruling. Fellow conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh said in a concurring opinion that state and local election officials did not have enough time to 'reasonably implement the rule' this time. But Kavanaugh noted that 'there is at least a fair prospect that the final rule falls within the Postal Service's statutory authority.'