Today, federal District Court Judge Indira Talwani issued a 14 day emergency stay on USPS preparing to implement or implementing its now final rule attempting to control how states mail out ballots to vote-from-home voters. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mad.298449/gov.uscourts.mad.298449.218.0_1.pdf 1/ #LawFedi
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The Roberts Six used the shadow docket to quash an earlier injunction Talwani ordered to prohibit USPS from acting on Trump’s EO to federalize vote-from-home (a more accurate term than mail-in voting or absentee voting). The Six argued that plaintiff states’ challenge was not yet ripe when Talwani issued that injunction, bc the USPS had not issued a final rule. 2/
That argument from the Six was mighty disingenuous, since everybody knew USPS had already circulated a draft of the final rule, which it promulgated before the Six said nobody knew whether USPS would publish a final rule. In any event, USPS published on Wednesday, 8/26. Plaintiff states and plaintiff civic organizations immediately filed motions for emergency stays in Talwani’s court, accompanied by motions for swift consideration of a fuller injunction. 3/
Today, Talwani granted the motion for the emergency stay and set an expedited briefing schedule on the motions for a longer term injunction. 4/
Talwani used the Roberts Six ‘s own words to explain that the case is now ripe for judicial action. 5/
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USPS is now claiming that it is “too late” for the plaintiffs to obtain judicial relief. Addressing this, Talwani used the USPS’s own earlier claims as to why the plaintiffs’ previous effort to obtain relief was too early. 6/
Judge Talwani, like other brave federal district court judges, is calling bluffs by the Roberts Six and by the Trump regime. Both the Six and the Trump executive branch constantly make assertions they turn around and ignore. This sort of capricious, duplicitous action by government actors - executive or judicial - is the essence of tyranny. 7/
Tyrannical governments are those that put themselves above the law. Judge Talwani cannot make the Roberts Six abide by their own words or by the precedents of the Supreme Court. But she can and is positioning her rulings so that, no matter what, the lawlessness of the Six will be manifest if they continue to allow Trump to disrupt the election and unconstitutionally take over election administration. 8/8
