Photo: Andrew Garber, Senior Counsel with the Voting Rights and Elections Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, speaks at a news conference on Sept. 3, 2026, outside the U.S. District Court in Boston. (Josh Reynolds/AP Content Services for Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.)
The U.S. Postal Service’s new mail voting rules overstep the authority granted to it by Congress, pro-voting groups argued in a brief asking a federal appeals court to keep the rule frozen before the upcoming elections.
“This is not a mere ‘envelope design’ or labeling rule, but a barrier to ballot transmission,” the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts (LWVM) and other pro-voting groups wrote in a brief filed on Monday with the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals.
The pro-voting groups’ argument heavily relies on the major questions doctrine, a legal interpretive tool often favored by the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority. The doctrine heavily scrutinizes federal agency actions that lack clear authority from Congress. The Justice Department has separately appealed the mail voting restrictions case to the Supreme Court.
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