A federal appeals court is upholding a key election integrity provision implemented by President Donald Trump, but a conflicting court ruling may prevent the measure from taking effect where it’s needed most. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled on Friday to stay a lower court order blocking the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) from withholding mail-in ballots from states that refuse to turn over their voter rolls to the federal government and allow USPS and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to cross-check registered voters requesting mail-in ballots against a list of U.S. citizens.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) filed a lawsuit last month challenging the new USPS rule, and Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia subsequently issued an injunction prohibiting USPS from implementing the new rule, which he determined would have violated a 2021 settlement agreement between the NAACP and USPS.

The appellate court disagreed, finding that USPS “made a strong showing that they will likely succeed” on at least two of their arguments against Sullivan’s injunction. First, the new USPS rule “is likely neither constitutionally nor prudentially ripe for review,” the appellate court observed, further stipulating that the rule does not conflict with the terms of the settlement agreement and likely falls outside the scope of that agreement. Additionally, the appellate court determined that USPS has “demonstrated irreparable harm on the ground that, absent a stay, the district court’s injunction will render [them] unable to issue and implement a final rule in advance of the November 2026 general election. In this context, there can be no do over once the election occurs.” (Internal citations omitted.)

However, the new USPS rule, aimed at mitigating election fraud and ensuring that only U.S. citizens vote in American elections, is still blocked in 23 states and the District of Columbia, pending appeal of a different ruling in a different case. Late last month, Judge Indira Talwani of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts ruled that parts of the president’s election integrity executive order, including the section mandating the USPS rule change, were “legally void as they are ultra vires and unconstitutionally violate the separation of powers…”

Talwani blocked the Trump administration from enforcing the USPS rule change or enforcing a provision to verify the U.S. citizenship of voters in Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia.

Similarly, Judge Denise Casper of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts issued a ruling declaring the president’s executive order, entitled “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Local Elections” to be illegal, determining that it violates the Constitution’s Election Clause, which delegates the responsibility of planning and running elections to states, and the separation of powers. Casper accused the president of effectively writing new laws, a power reserved to Congress, despite admitting that the chief aim of the president’s executive order is to protect what she called “the undisputed principle that U.S. citizenship is required to vote in federal elections…” (Internal citations omitted.)

Late last week, the president himself punctuated the need for election integrity in an address to the nation, revealing the depths of widespread election fraud and the extent to which foreign actors have manipulated and meddled in U.S. elections. According to the president, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) interfered significantly in the 2020 presidential election, illicitly obtaining and exploiting an estimated 220 million U.S. voter files. The CCP used U.S. citizens’ personal data, including names, birth dates, personal addresses, phone numbers, and other identifying information, to register fraudulent or fictitious entities to vote. The CCP also manufactured fraudulent ballots in the 2020 election in a bid to help Democratic nominee Joe Biden take the White House. Furthermore, senior U.S. intelligence officials not only knew of the CCP’s activities and other election infrastructure vulnerabilities, but actively covered it up, intentionally withholding the information from Trump and his allies.

Emphasizing the importance of U.S. citizenship verification in elections, the president also confirmed that nearly 300,000 noncitizens are registered to vote in U.S. federal elections, according to a DHS investigation. That investigation, the president noted, relies solely on data provided to DHS by red states. Democrat-led states, many of which have implemented “sanctuary” policies shielding illegal immigrants, refused to comply with the probe, so the real number of noncitizens registered to vote is likely much higher, perhaps even double the number reported by the president.