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A federal judge on Thursday said she’ll only consider parts of challenges to President Trump’s executive order that seeks to restrict mail-in voting, ruling the plaintiffs need to wait before raising concerns about elections beyond this year.
A group of voter education nonprofits and Democratic-led states separately sued the Trump administration in April in an attempt to block the executive order, which also requires states to verify that only U.S. citizens are registered.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani denied the administration’s bid to dismiss the claims entirely, allowing challenges pertaining to the November midterms to go forward. She determined that the court should not delay review given the “ever-narrowing window of time” before the election and some states’ primaries.
“In light of the EO’s specific deadlines over the next three months, and the reality that elections will be occurring throughout this period with the November 3, 2026 midterm occurring in just five months, postponing judicial review is impracticable and may inflict significant hardship on Plaintiffs,” Talwani wrote in a 17-page consolidated order.
But the judge also acknowledged that there were “many uncertainties” as to how federal agencies would eventually implement the executive order so it would be premature to challenge anything beyond the midterms.
Talwani was appointed to the bench by former President Obama.
“We are pleased that the Trump Administration’s attempt to dismiss our lawsuit as premature was rejected with respect to the upcoming November midterm elections,” a spokesperson for California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) told The Hill in a statement. Bonta’s office led the states’ lawsuit.
“The case will now move forward to a decision on the remaining disputed issues, and we remain confident that the law is on our side,” the spokesperson added.
The White House did not immediately respond to The Hill’s request for comment.
Trump has sought to overhaul the federal elections process in his second term, arguing that the practice of mail-in ballots and instances of undocumented immigrants voting have contributed to widespread election fraud, despite little evidence to support his claims.
The president himself has cast ballots by mail in elections, including most recently in a special election in Florida.
The president’s executive order, signed in March, directs Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to work with the Social Security Administration to compile a list of verified U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote and bars the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) from sending ballots to those not listed.
The order also directed the attorney general to prioritize investigations and prosecutions of anyone accused of sending ballots to voters deemed to be ineligible.
The order quickly drew lawsuits from more nearly two dozen states, the District of Columbia and voting rights groups, which argued that it was unconstitutional and threatened to disenfranchise eligible voters.
They asserted that the president could not exert control over how federal elections are run because that authority belonged to the states. The states also argued that changes would force them to invest “enormous amounts of time and resources” in order to comply and “sow confusion and chaos” in the election process.
Last month, a federal judge in D.C. declined to block the executive order, siding with the federal government in a challenge brought by Senate Democrats’ campaign arm, the NAACP and the League of United Latin American Citizens.
That decision has been appealed.
Updated at 4:44 p.m.
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