Louis Capozzi filed in Boston federal court on Thursday for Alabama, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and Texas, opposing the League of Women Voters' emergency bid to stop the Postal Service from running Donald Trump's mail-ballot rules through the November midterms. Twelve Republican-led states intervened in someone else's lawsuit to defend a federal rule, and they made Judge Indira Talwani's noon deadline to do it.
Justice Department lawyer Stephen Pezzi filed the administration's own opposition the same morning, for Trump, the Postal Service, its Board of Governors, Homeland Security, Social Security and Citizenship and Immigration Services.
The League moved first, on Wednesday. Sophia Lin Lakin of the ACLU filed a supplemental complaint, an emergency motion for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction, a memorandum and declarations, for eight nonpartisan groups — the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts, the national League and two of its education funds, the Association of Americans Resident Overseas, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, OCA–Asian Pacific American Advocates and the U.S. Vote Foundation. They asked Talwani to block the rule for the midterms, immediately.
"USPS's decision to rush this blatantly unconstitutional rule into effect just weeks before an election is the latest step in a rollout that has sown confusion at every turn," Lakin said.
