U.S. Postal Service can't follow Trump ballot order, judge rules

July 1 (UPI) -- A federal judge on Wednesday ruled that the U.S. Postal Service cannot implement changes to its delivery of ballots to meet President Donald Trump's executive order on voting by mail.

Trump previously ordered the USPS to refuse to mail ballots to those his administration determines are ineligible to vote. The agency proposed to meet that requirement by only delivering ballots in states that handed over their registered voter rolls to the federal government.

This follows a more limited ruling last week, in which another federal judge found that the Postal Service could not implement the order for the states that had challenged it in court. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan's ruling Wednesday, however, applies in all states, CNN reported.

Sullivan found that the Postal Service plan would violate a 2021 settlement between the NAACP and the agency. In it, the USPS promised to "prioritize monitoring and timely delivery of election mail," The New York Times reported, and both parties agreed it would extend at least through the 2028 election.

Sullivan wrote that Trump's order seemed "designed to exert federal control over who in the United States may be sent a mail-in or absentee ballot in federal elections by the Postal Service."

Anthony Ashton, the NAACP's senior associate general counsel,said Wednesday that the proposed Postal Service changes would have "created unnecessary and unlawful barriers" in violation of the 2021 settlement and that those barriers would have disproportionately harmed Black voters, The Times reported.

"Put simply, the use of mail-in voting helps reduce voter intimidation at the polls and Election Day dirty tricks," Ashton said.

The U.S. Postal Service has not commented on the ruling.

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