Eleven lawsuits have been filed against Postmaster General DeJoy, the U.S. Postal Service, and President Trump over issues connected to mail delays and threats to voting by mail in the November election. We’re “live blogging” the latest developments on a daily basis. At the bottom of the page is a list of the cases with links to the original complaints and the case numbers on PACER.

September 21, 2020

Big news today: The plaintiffs have won a second suit against the Postal Service. The judge in Jones v USPS, Victor Morrero of the SDNY, has ordered a preliminary injunction preventing the Postal Service from enacting changes that endanger voting by mail. The order is here. It’s the second such order for a preliminary injunction, following the order in Washington v USPS issued on Sept. 17. The Associated Press had the first article about the Jones decision, here; CNN reports here; and Government Executive has a good summary of the order, here.

The Jones order directs the Postal Service to “treat all Election Mail as First-Class Mail or Priority Mail Express” and to provide the court a cost estimate for doing so; to “pre-approve all overtime that has been or will be requested for the time period beginning October 26, 2020 and continuing through November 6, 2020”; and “submit to the Court a list of steps necessary to restore First-Class Mail and Marketing Mail on-time delivery scores to the highest score each respective class of mail has received in 2020.”

The Jones order also directs the Postal Service to submit a proposed memorandum to all USPS managerial staff (the “Guidance Memorandum”) that explains all USPS policy requirements concerning the treatment of Election Mail and that clarifies late and extra trips are not banned, do not require pre-approval, and will not result in disciplinary action.

Judge Morrero has also ordered the Postal Service to provide not only the same weekly updates on service performance that the USPS is providing Congress but also more detailed reports that disaggregate 2-day and 3-5 day service reports and include variance data showing how many days late the mail is.

These are the same kind of detailed reports that, at my request, the Postal Regulatory Commission asked the Postal Service to provide for the period June 1 – Sept 4. The Postal Service said that it would take 56 weeks to prepare such reports, and it failed to submit them by the deadline, Sept. 18. It will be interesting to see how the Commission responds to this failure. In any case, the reports ordered by the court in Jones are for the weeks going forward, so preparing them should not be as great a burden as the retrospective reports

On a side note, we’re happy to report that Mark Jamison, regular contributor to savethepostoffice.com, submitted oral and written testimony in Jones, and his comments are cited several times in Judge Morrero’s order.

In Richardson, the plaintiffs have filed a Reply in Further Support of Plaintiffs’ Motion for a Preliminary Injunction. The Reply frequently cites the order for a preliminary injunction in Washington, and concludes with a request for a “special master”: “The grave constitutional harm that will result from USPS’s failure to implement any changes ordered, along with the extremely short time in which USPS must implement those changes, requires supervision to ensure that it is done. Therefore, Plaintiffs request that the Court exercise its discretion to appoint a master to assist in the implementation of the Court’s orders.”

In Vote Forward, defendants DeJoy and USPS have submitted a Response to Plaintiffs’ Motion for Expedited Discovery, arguing that “expedited discovery would impose an undue burden on USPS as its key personnel are consumed with assessing and coordinating the agency’s compliance with the injunction” in Washington. The defendants also argue that there is already a “wealth of available, relevant evidence” from the other cases so that additional expedited discovery would be duplicative and burdensome.

September 18, 2020

The plaintiffs in Johnakin have filed a proposed preliminary injunction. The injunction would prevent the Postal Service from continuing to enforce the operational and policy changes adopted and/or implemented from June 2020 to the present; engaging in conduct such as reducing staff hours, prohibiting overtime, prohibiting late trips or prohibiting late trips prior to the November 3, 2020 General Election; engaging in conduct such as closing mail processing centers, removing or idling mail sorting machines from postal facilities, instructing mail carriers to leave mail behind and removing or locking mailboxes prior to the November 3, 2020 General Election; and taking any actions which would delay the mail. The injunction would also direct the Postal Service to treat all mail-in ballots as Priority Mail and take all necessary steps to ensure that absentee and other mail-in ballots are delivered to election officials in a timely manner by November 3, 2020.

September 17, 2020

Big news today: The judge in Washington issued a temporary injunction against USPS operational changes amid concerns about mail slowdowns. The Washington Post has the story. Stanley A. Bastian, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington, said that harm to the public “has already taken place” by changes put in place under DeJoy. “The states have demonstrated that the defendants are involved in a politically motivated attack on the efficiency of the Postal Service. They have also demonstrated that this attack on the Postal Service is likely to irreparably harm the states’ ability to administer the 2020 general election,” said Judge Bastian.

The temporary injunction hasn’t been posted on PACER yet, (Update: here it is) but Judge Bastian says it will take the form of the injunction proposed by the plaintiffs. A copy of that version is here. It says that the Postal Service is “hereby enjoined from the following until the Court resolves the merits of the case.” Included are “instructing mail carriers to leave mail behind,” “requiring mail carriers or delivery trucks to leave at set times,” taking actions outlined in the Mandatory Standup Talk, “deviating from USPS long-standing policy of treating Election mail in accordance with First Class Mail delivery standards, regardless of the paid classElection Mail,” and making any other changes on a nationwide basis without first requesting an Advisory Opinion from the PRC.

The proposed injunction in Washington proceeds to say that “if any post office, distribution center, or other postal facility will be unable to process election mail for the November 2020 election in accordance with First Class delivery standards because of the Postal Service’s recent removal and decommissioning of equipment, such equipment will be replaced, reassembled, or reconnected.”

A few developments in some other cases as well: In the NAACP case, the plaintiffs filed a reply memo supporting their motion for a preliminary injunction. It’s not clear if that will be necessary now that Judge Bastian has issued his preliminary injunction.

In Pennsylvania v Dejoy, the Justice Department attorneys defending the Postal Service have filed a letter arguing that the discovery requests of the plaintiffs would be “unduly burdensome and not proportionate to the needs of the case.” Read More