A federal judge on Thursday halted — at least for now — attempts to implement President Donald Trump’s executive order that seeks to restrict the mailing of ballots to American citizens on an eligible voters list.

The move stalled the directive for a second time only about a week before the first mail ballots are due to be sent out for the rapidly approaching midterm elections. U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani blocked the government from implementing the order for two weeks.

In a statement Thursday, Secretary of State Jena Griswold said, “Today marks a significant win in the fight to stop (President) Donald Trump from unlawfully weaponizing the Postal Service to restrict access to mail ballots. Trump does not have the authority to decide which voters can receive a mail ballot or impose his own rules on our elections. We will fight his unlawful effort to suppress the vote.”

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser — who joined 25 other states in suing the U.S. Postal Service over its plan to carry out Trump’s March 31 executive order — also cheered the judge’s order.

“The Trump administration is trying to interfere with Colorado’s elections and put up new barriers to voting just weeks before Election Day,” Weiser said in a statement Friday. “We will not allow that to happen. Colorado’s mail ballot system is secure, accessible, and works.” 

The case could soon be appealed back to the U.S. Supreme Court, days after the justices handed down a procedural decision that allowed the Trump administration to move ahead.

The ruling on Thursday came after Democrats and voting rights groups refiled their lawsuits to comply with the recent Supreme Court decision. The high court’s conservative majority did not rule on the legality of Trump’s executive order, instead saying Talwani had acted too soon.

Now the administration has issued a formal rule governing whether the U.S. Postal Service will deliver states’ mail ballots, effectively restarting the legal fight.

The whipsawing legal battle has major ramifications for the midterms. Nearly one-third of Americans vote by mail and election officials contend there isn’t enough time to revise their systems to comply with the new Postal Service directives.

Supporters of the administration’s order have argued that the changes are long overdue.

The Postal Service says it won’t deliver mail ballots unless states provide a list of voters who should receive them and format the envelopes in a certain way.

“Plaintiff states have neither time nor funds to design new mail ballots, seek approval of the new designs, order production of mail ballots, update their own election management systems, train election officials to use the USPS portal and upload citizen data to the portal, all before the midterms,” Talwani wrote Thursday.

Griswold has said Colorado’s plans remain in place, with ballots slated to be sent to all active registered voters starting Oct. 2. The General Election is on Nov. 3.

Colorado’s highest election official has described the state as having the “gold standard” when it comes to mail-in voting.

In fact, Colorado’s mail-in voting system has encountered numerous problems, though the ballots affected were small and officials maintained the anomalies did not affect the outcome of elections.

• In 2019, Mesa County’s election office found some 500 ballots in a drop box — those ballots were never counted.
• In 2022, a commissioner race was omitted from the ballot for the Democratic primary in Pueblo County, compelling a reprint of about 70,000 ballots. Even after the reprint, some 1,600 ballots were sent still without the commissioner race. That same election year, a little over a dozen voters got ballots with the wrong state House race.
• Also in 2022, Denver’s election office uncovered that 60 voters got ballots for another precinct.
• In 2024, a dozen mail ballots were intercepted in Mesa County, filled out and turned in.
• Also in 2024, election officials in Denver and Adams counties investigated what they described as potential voter fraud after identifying “ballot irregularities” and mismatched signatures. The suspicious ballots came from the same daycare address.

This issue has surfaced on the campaign trail, where two candidates for Colorado governor were asked how they view Trump’s ongoing push to add new guardrails to state elections.

During Thursday’s debate in Colorado Springs, Weiser, the Democratic candidate running for governor, said said that, under federal law, elections are administered by individual states and cannot be regulated by the federal government.

Independent candidate Greg Lopez agreed with Weiser, pulling out a copy of the Constitution that says states have full authority over the “time, place and manner” of elections.

Actually, the constitutional provision has a separate clause giving Congress the authority to override the states:

“The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment. A hearing in the case is set for Sept. 3.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.