The NAACP scored a legal victory over the US Postal Service in a dispute about mail-in balloting.

The parties had reached a settlement agreement stemming from the NAACP’s objection to the postal service’s handling of the mail-in ballot during the COVID-era presidential election in 2020.

The agreement required the USPS to publish “National Guidance documents” for every national election through 2028 about its “policies for prioritizing the monitoring and timely delivery of Election Mail.”

President Donald Trump issued an executive order in March regarding who can receive mail-in or absentee ballots in a federal election.

The USPS issued a proposed rule that would allow the ballots to be mailed to people who appear on lists that are assembled by each state.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People challenged the rule in the DC District Court. The group said the rule would violate the settlement agreement because the USPS would not accept ballots that lacked the proper envelopes and barcodes.

The DC Circuit Court agreed with the NAACP in an opinion written by Judge Emmet Sullivan.

“The Proposed Rule violates paragraph 2 of the Agreement because the Postal Service cannot post documents reflecting ‘practices and
policies for prioritizing the monitoring and timely delivery of Election Mail’ if its policies provide that it will not accept ‘noncompliant mailings’ and therefore will not deliver mail-in or absentee ballots to some voters, and if it will not mail ballots to any voters in a state where the state ‘declines or fails to certify a list,’” Sullivan wrote.