Nationwide Coalition of Attorneys General Challenge Trump Administration’s Changes to Mail-Based Voting Wednesday

BOSTON (KEYT) – California's Attorney General has joined a coalition of 24 attorneys general and the Governor of Pennsylvania in filing a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Postal Service's new rule allowing it to reject mail-based ballots nationwide.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts today, argued that the new rule unlawfully empowers the federal agency to impede the authority of states and Congress to manage elections found in the U.S. Constitution.

"With the publication of a new regulation, crafted at the President's behest just before the midterm elections, the United States Postal Service ('USPS') has purportedly granted itself the authority to regulate mail voting in federal elections," opened Wednesday's lawsuit. "That includes the authority to monitor and control which voters will receive a mail ballot from state and local election officials, and to task those same officials with new election administration procedures."

The federal agency's rule change is the latest attempt to alter mail-based voting nationwide.

The U.S. Constitution states in Article I, Section 4 that decisions regarding, "the times, places, and manner of holding Elections" are delegated to Congress and managed by each state.

The Section does not mention any executive branch position, office, agency, nor department.

"Whether a qualified voter may vote by mail is a question of state law, as is the question of whether a ballot will be accepted for processing and tabulation. The Constitution is clear that States have the primary responsibility for regulating and administering elections, subject only to preemption by Congress—authority that expressly extends to the 'manner' of elections," argued Wednesday's filing. "Congress has not afforded USPS any authority whatsoever to set rules for federal elections or mail voting, even though Americans have cast ballots by mail for generations."

On March 25 of last year, President Trump issued Executive Order No. 14248 which was met with a lawsuit filed by a coalition of attorneys general including California Attorney General Rob Bonta.

The group of state prosecutors secured a preliminary injunction that remains in effect and a motion to dismiss that lawsuit filed by the Trump Administration was denied by a federal judge in District Court in Massachusetts.

On March 31 of this year, the Trump Administration issued Executive Order No. 14399 Ensuring Citizenship Verification And Integrity In Federal Elections.

Executive Order No. 14399 made sweeping changes to national elections in the following ways:

• Tasked the Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Commissioner of the Social Security Administration to create a list of voters using federal databases and transmit that voter list to elections officials in each state at least 60 days before any federal election
• Directed the Postmaster General of the U.S. Postal Service to develop lists of voters enrolled with the federal agency for mail-in voting and coordinate with the Department of Justice to investigate any use of mailed elections materials outside of federally authorized mail-in voting
• Ordered the Attorney General of the United States to take all lawful steps to stop non-compliance with the new elections rules and required states and localities to preserve all records of voter participation in any federal election for five years

In response, a coalition of 24 attorneys general filed suit against the second elections-related executive order before requesting a summary judgment without a trial and federal courts agreed by permanently blocking key parts of the second attempt to take over elections nationwide via executive order.

Despite those setbacks in court, the U.S. Postal Service followed through with making changes to mail-based voting in compliance with Executive Order 14399 through a rule change announced late Friday of last week and on Monday of this week, the U.S. Supreme Court in an unsigned opinion paused the lower court's injunction and allowed the changes, but notably, did not rule on the legality of the rule.

"[T]he Court has not foreclosed States from challenging this blatantly unconstitutional Order," Associate Justice Jackson stated in a dissenting opinion. "But it declines to explain when [emphasis original], exactly, is the right time to bring a meritorious election-rule claim challenging unconstitutional interference with electoral processes. The majority just signals that these claimants had to wait—even though the election cycle had started and despite facing pocketbook costs, threats of prosecution, and an affront to their sovereignty—before receiving the relief to which they are likely entitled."

The coalition of attorneys general continued Justice Jackson's note regarding the question of the legality of the rule change in their filing.

"After a short comment period and without referral to the Postal Regulatory Commission—a body required to review major changes to USPS's policies or operations—USPS published a final rule," argued Wednesday's filing in federal court. "The Rule violates the Constitution and federal statutes many times over. It displaces state laws adopted pursuant to each State’s constitutional authority to administer elections, erects new USPS functions and ballot mail constraints that are inconsistent with USPS's governing statutes, flouts USPS's procedural requirements, violates the Privacy Act, and cannot be reconciled with federal voting rights law. Each of these defects would alone establish the Rule's unlawfulness. Together, they demonstrate USPS's utter disregard for the law in carrying out the President's policy preferences."

While the Supreme Court ruled plaintiffs lacked definitive harms caused by the rule change last week, the U.S. Postal Service admitted without a legal challenge, the right to mail-based voting would be subject to the discretion of the Trump Administration going forward.

During testimony this summer, Postmaster General David Steiner informed the Senate Homeland Security Committee that the U.S. Postal Service would refuse to deliver ballots to states that did not comply with the proposed rule.

Changes implemented by the U.S. Postal Service in April, July, and December of last year have already impacted mailed ballots locally.

In October of last year, the San Luis Obispo County Clerk-Recorder's Office warned that people living more than 50 miles from a postal processing hub should no longer assume their ballots will be postmarked the day they mail it and in December of the same year, the U.S. Postal Service finalized the ballot processing changes.

Every single voter in San Luis Obispo County lives more than 50 miles from the U.S. Postal Service hub in Goleta and voters are now encouraged by the local elections supervisor as well as the U.S. Postal Service to mail their ballots at least one week before Election Day.

State law allows ballots to be received up to seven days after an election and still be counted, but ballots that are not postmarked by Election Day are not counted.

"Though the deadline to submit mail voter lists to USPS is still several weeks away, the Rule is already causing acute harm," detailed Wednesday's suit. "Plaintiff States or their subdivisions must immediately redesign their ballot envelopes and seek USPS review at significant costs to States. Plaintiff States' election officials must also develop new systems at breakneck speed to convey mail voter lists to USPS to ensure that every eligible voter who is entitled to a mail ballot receives one, create new guidance for and train election officials, and educate the public about changes to mail voting. They must also prepare for the spillover effects from USPS's new mail ballot regime, including preparing for an influx of voters who ordinarily would vote by mail, but instead opt to do so in person because of USPS's last-minute changes."

Earlier this month, over a quarter of the U.S. Senate warned the Trump Administration that the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 prohibits major changes to voter rolls within 90 days of an election and urged the Trump Administration to confirm its intent to follow federal law ahead of the midterm elections in November.

The deadline imposed by the Senators for the Trump Administration to confirm its intent to follow the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 was August 7 of this year.

In addition to those election-specific executive orders, the Department of Justice sent formal requests to 48 states and Washington D.C. for complete versions of their respective voter lists and multiple states including California, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, New Hampshire, Oregon, and Pennsylvania were sued by the federal government to force them to turn over their voter lists.

Of the lawsuits filed by U.S. Department of Justice against the 30 states and Washington D.C. for access to voter rolls, 23 have been dismissed by federal courts.

Federal law does require states to maintain accurate voter rolls and allows people in most states to register to vote at their Department of Motor Vehicles, but does not authorize the Department of Justice to participate in that maintenance.

In January of this year, a federal judge dismissed the U.S. Department of Justice's lawsuit seeking access to Californian's private voter information calling the attempt, "unprecedented and illegal".

"The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) seeks an unprecedented amount of personal information related to California voters from California's unredacted voting rolls. The requested information includes the names, social security numbers, home addresses, voting history and other sensitive information of nearly 23 million Californians," wrote Federal District Judge David O. Carter in January's decision to dismiss the Justice Department's demand. "The Department of Justice seeks to use civil rights legislation which was enacted for an entirely different purpose to amass and retain an unprecedented amount of confidential voter data. This effort goes far beyond what Congress intended when it passed the underlying legislation. The centralization of this information by the federal government would have a chilling effect on voter registration which would inevitably lead to decreasing voter turnout as voters fear that their information is being used for some inappropriate or unlawful purpose. This risk threatens the right to vote which is the cornerstone of American democracy."

According to Wednesday's filing, 80.8 percent of Californians voted by mail in the 2024 General Election, a total of 13 million voters.

While the U.S. Constitution states that individual states are responsible for management of elections, the same Section also empowers Congress with the authority to make changes.

"Congress has acted only narrowly to ensure (1) that absentee voting is available to U.S. citizens for presidential elections, and (2) that members of the military and citizens residing overseas may readily participate in federal elections," noted Wednesday's filing. "Congress has also set forth certain requirements for voter registration and prohibitions concerning curtailing the right to vote."

None of the attempts to fundamentally alter voting nationwide by the Trump Administration detailed above were authorized by Congress added Wednesday's lawsuit.

"In all this time—spanning from the advent of voting by mail, tied to the Civil War, to its increased prevalence in more recent decades—Congress has never exercised its Elections Clause authority to limit mail voting or authorize USPS to monitor or control the transmission of mail ballots. Rather, Congress has only expanded and protected mail voting for military and overseas voters."

The Trump Administration has attempted to pass elections bills through Congress, but the most notable one, the SAVE America Act, has stalled in the U.S. Senate.

In fact, the White House created a website as part of its lobbying efforts for the election reform bill still making awaiting Congressional approval, a potential illegal use of taxpayer funds noted members of Congress in a letter to a federal watchdog in February of this year.

"Having failed to persuade Congress, the President has continued his efforts to unilaterally impose federal control over elections," noted Wednesday's lawsuit. "The Administration has also continued its election interference by threatening criminal prosecution of state and local election officials. On July 7, 2026, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon sent a letter to the chief election officials of all 50 states. Under the guise of providing 'notice of the federal laws applicable to state and local election officials[,]' the letter sets out thinly veiled threats of criminal prosecution six times in just the first two pages."

During a public event in Pennsylvania back in June of this year, President Trump admitted to another attempt to undermine the elections process through a federal prosecutor's office in California on behalf of Republican candidate for Governor, Steve Hilton.

"I called up the very powerful and very good U.S. attorney in California, and I said, 'Do me a favor. Take a look, they are trying to steal that election, too.'

I guess they called up. They said, ‘This is the U.S. Attorney calling.’

So, over the next week, he was definitely going to lose, but the U.S. attorney called, ‘We want to check your votes.’ About an hour after the call, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Hilton has won.’ Had I not made that call, Steve Hilton would right now be watching the election from home.

-President Donald J. Trump on June 23, 2026

Just days after the 2026 Primary Election in California earlier this month, First Assistant Bill Essayli for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California announced his office was pursuing "multiple election fraud investigations" in coordination with the FBI Field Office in Los Angeles.

Your News Channel reached out the FBI Field Office in Los Angeles and the First Assistant's Office for more information about the announced investigations and while the FBI Field Office has not responded to multiple inquiries, the federal prosecutor's office stated previously that it would not comment on ongoing investigations nor verify the nature of its inquiries.

When asked directly about the President's claims that federal prosecutors had influenced the election results at the direction of the White House Thursday, a spokesperson for the federal prosecutor's office in Los Angeles stated to Your News Channel author that, "the President said what he said" before hanging up.

According to CNN, the Justice Department did send at least one federal attorney to observe ballot processing in Los Angeles County the same day as the announcement and Your News Channel was able to confirm that none of the counties in our coverage area had been contacted by federal prosecutors regarding any investigation.

Wednesday's lawsuit concluded by asking for the federal court to declare the rule unlawful and ultra vires, or beyond the powers of the Trump Administration, as well as preliminarily halt the implementation of the new rule.

"This mail-in voting rule is an unlawful overreach that shows just how far President Trump will go to control elections, but as I've said before, this fight is far from over and we are confident that the facts and the law are on our side," said Attorney General Bonta. "On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to fully close the door on the President's attempt to interfere in our election administration. Today, we're taking legal action to stop this unlawful rule in its tracks and ensure that voters can exercise their constitutional right to vote. Let's be clear: the U.S. Constitution gives states the power to regulate elections — not the President and not USPS. Ballots are an extension of our voices and we're asking the court to ensure that every person has the right to make theirs heard."