12 GOP state AGs appeal ruling blocking Trump's mail voting rule

Twelve Republican state attorneys general started the process Thursday of appealing a September ruling that blocked the president's mail-in voting restrictions, hoping to have them in force by 2028. The coalition includes the top lawyers for Alabama, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and Texas. They're fighting an order by U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, who stopped the U.S. Postal Service from executing a plan it released in response to a Trump executive order.

How long all twelve stay in the fight is an open question. Democratic candidates are set to take control of the Texas and Kansas attorney general offices in January, after winning up and down the ballot in the midterms.

The blocked rule, unveiled in late August, would have required states to turn over lists of voters' names and addresses before USPS would deliver their ballots. Nichols, a Washington, D.C.-based judge nominated by Trump, found the mailing agency likely lacks the power to impose that 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," he wrote.

Nichols' preliminary injunction applies to all federal elections, including the 2028 race. That's broader than a similar ruling from Boston-based Judge Indira Talwani, which the Supreme Court refused to pause in September and which only covered this year's midterms.

Whether the Trump administration files its own appeal is unclear — Friday is the deadline for a court notice. Asked about the Justice Department's plans, spokesperson Matthew Tragesser said by email that the department doesn't comment on ongoing litigation.

Election officials were alarmed by the earlier midterm push, worried that late changes would disrupt the tens of millions of people who routinely vote by mail, including voters with disabilities and those in areas without polling sites. A whistleblower report claimed the online system officials would have needed to comply hadn't been properly tested and could have left eligible voters without mail-in ballots in time, or entirely. At the Supreme Court, Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented from the September ruling, while Justice Brett Kavanaugh concurred that officials lacked time to "reasonably implement the rule" this cycle — yet noted "there is at least a fair prospect that the final rule falls within the Postal Service's statutory authority."