North Carolina elections officials are planning to move ahead with absentee voting as planned, sending out mail-in ballots next week, following a new federal court ruling in a case focused in part on who has the constitutional right to write election rules.   

A federal judge Thursday once again temporarily prohibited the U.S. Postal Service from implementing a plan to restrict mail-in voting, put in place after a directive from President Donald Trump. 

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U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani had cleared the way for the Postal Service to move forward just the day before. On Thursday, though, she issued a new order concluding that the agency’s plan appeared to overstep its legal mandate and could lead to chaos by changing rules fewer than 70 days before an election.

A group of Democratic-led states had sued, saying the president’s order infringed on states’ rights to administer elections. Those states “face irreparable harm where they are required to comply with a likely unconstitutional regulation for which compliance is practically impossible as to the 2026 midterm elections, now little more than two months away,” the judge wrote. 

“Most plaintiff states have already ordered their mail ballots, and some are required by state law to send them to eligible voters as early as next week,” she added.

Talwani wrote that while the Supreme Court had “admonished” her Monday that the Postal Service had not finalized any changes when the groups sued initially, making court action premature, the stakes had changed since then because of the step the agency took late last week to formalized its plan.

The Trump administration filed a notice of appeal Friday. The White House calls the plan a set of “commonsense measures” aimed at protecting ballot security.

North Carolina’s plans

North Carolina was among the states suing to stop the Postal Service from being allowed to decide who should or shouldn’t be allowed to receive or turn in mail-in ballots. The ongoing lawsuit has raised questions about whether the state would be able to send out mail-in ballots by Sept. 4 as planned. 

“It would have caused chaos in our election,” Jeff Jackson, North Carolina’s attorney general said in a statement on social media late Thursday. “We stopped it for now, and we'll keep defending free and fair elections.”

The U.S. Supreme Court could still step in to undo the ruling and empower Trump and the Postal Service to block ballots from being delivered in certain states. For now, the North Carolina State Board of Elections is still planning to move forward with its plans, absent any additional court rulings ordering it to stop or delay its efforts to mail out ballots.

“It appears right now like the rule will likely not be in place for the midterms, and so we plan to proceed on as business as usual,” Jason Tyson, a spokesman for the state elections board, said in a statement. “If anything changes, we plan to follow the law as settled.”

There’s a longstanding legal principle that no one — judges, politicians nor government bureaucrats — can change the rules of an election once it’s started. And since the 2026 midterm elections are set to start next week with North Carolina’s first round of ballot mailings, time is running out for Trump to be able to implement these plans.

There’s precedent for court fights delaying the start of mail-in voting in North Carolina. In the 2024 elections it was put on hold due to a legal fight over whether to include Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s name on the ballot. He had been a presidential candidate that year but later dropped out and endorsed Trump, who made him the country’s top health official in return. Kennedy dropped out past the deadline to do so, but a Republican majority on the state Supreme Court ordered the state to reprint ballots anyway to take Kennedy’s name off them, delaying the start of mail-in voting by weeks.

There are other legal battles playing out at the state and federal levels, and there’s a chance those could also change the rules for mail-in voting. 

The North Carolina Rules Review Commission on Thursday gave its approval to proposed rules that could determine whether some ballots are ultimately counted. The rules could make it easier to throw out some ballots — including by creating new procedures for mail-in ballots and for voters who lack photo identification — and give poll workers new powers to eject people from polling places.

Those rules — which previously passed the State Board of Elections in a series of 3-2 votes, with the Republican majority in favor and Democrats opposed — are now expected to undergo a final legislative review, raising questions about whether they could be implemented before the election. Legislators adjourned weeks ago with plans to return to business after the election. 

Spokespeople for legislative leaders didn’t respond to questions about whether lawmakers would change their schedule to conduct the review ahead of the election. 

Meanwhile, an early-voting focused law proposed by the legislature — which would purge more voters and make it easier to throw out certain ballots — is also uncertain. North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat, vetoed the bill. Leaders in the Republican-led legislature have vowed to override Stein’s veto.

‘Significant risk’ of disenfranchisement

Talwani’s ruling marked the third court decision on the issue in less than a week, a whipsaw of action that threatened to confuse voters. But each delay has reduced the administration’s chances of clearing the legal hurdles to execute its logistically complicated mail-in ballot plan before the November election. She blocked the rule from taking effect for 14 days, and she had previously scheduled a hearing to discuss the legality of the rule on Sept. 3.

In her order, Talwani explained that the prospect of the new rule suddenly taking effect carried “significant risk of their members’ disenfranchisement” for voting rights organizations, which had also sued, along with the states.

She ticked through a list of requirements that state election officials would be required to meet to ensure delivery of ballots, including receiving the agency’s approval for new envelope designs and submitting voters’ information into an online portal run by the Postal Service.

“Where a state or local election official does not obtain envelope and return envelope design approval, or does not upload voter information, or does not include unique intelligent mail bar codes on ballot envelopes, the U.S.P.S. will not mail ballots to voters,” she concluded.

North Carolina typically submits items for USPS mail design analysis whenever it makes a change to the envelopes, state officials said Friday. The state expects its envelopes to be in compliance with USPS standards regardless of the outcome of any court ruling, officials said, enabling mailings to proceed as normal.

In March, Trump issued an executive order that required the Department of Homeland Security to create and circulate state-by-state citizenship lists to state officials. It further urged states to provide the U.S. Postal Service with their own lists of voters eligible to cast ballots by mail.

Multiple lawsuits were filed challenging the order, arguing that Congress and the states set rules for elections, not the executive branch. The challengers also argued that no federal law gives the Postal Service the power to make those kinds of election-related rules.

On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that one suit, brought by the group of Democratic-led states, was premature because the administration had not started implementing its plans. But late last week, just before the court ruled, the Postal Service formally published a new plan to comply with the executive order. Under that plan, the service would not deliver mail ballots in states that do not share voter data with the agency and would only deliver ballots that meet certain criteria.

Expanded role for USPS?

Lawyers for the Trump administration and the groups challenging the rule continue to clash over a straightforward issue: Whether or not the Postal Service’s plan would mean the agency would be taking on a new role verifying voters and potentially rejecting ballots in the midterm election in November.

In a filing Thursday, the Postal Service denied that its proposal left room for the service to second-guess states on which voters were eligible to cast a ballot.

“U.S.P.S. will not scrutinize those decisions or alter that information in any way — instead leaving it entirely up to the states to accurately and lawfully identify its residents who are eligible to vote by mail,” the filing said. “The Postal Service will not determine voter eligibility, ballot content, mailing or receipt deadlines, or ballot-counting procedures.”

Instead, it described the changes as minor logistical improvements and streamlining, such as requiring voters to submit their addresses ahead of time to improve processing. It said the changes were designed “as a matter of the Postal Service’s own judgment.” Lawyers for the service argued it is authorized to adopt mail rules under statutes adopted by Congress.

The challengers argue that the Postal Service rule is an unconstitutional violation of the separation of powers, allowing the executive branch to intrude into elections. They say that no federal law permits such action by the agency, and they assert that the Trump administration’s actions are likely to sow confusion among voters and to lead to disenfranchisement.

The agency has repeatedly said that it would not attempt to impose the new requirements, unless it was explicitly allowed to by the courts.

A series of lawsuits in Massachusetts and the District of Columbia by different groups have challenged Trump’s effort to discredit and erect obstacles to mail-in voting. The lawsuits have challenged both Trump’s executive order and the Postal Service rule, focusing on their implementation this year and beyond.