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In what’s been a whirlwind week in state election policy, Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield filed a new lawsuit Wednesday to block the Trump administration from meddling with the state’s vote-by-mail system in the November midterm.
“The Constitution is clear: no President has the authority to take over or interfere with any state’s elections,” Rayfield writes in a statement. “We’re not going to let Donald Trump dictate who gets to vote, and we’re not going to let him put the Postal Service between Oregon voters and their ballots.”
On Monday, the Supreme Court struck down an injunction that prevented the U.S. Postal Service from implementing an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in March. The order designates the postal service as the entity that determines who may vote and allows it to refuse ballots from voters not named on lists maintained by the federal government.
A federal district judge in Massachusetts had earlier upheld two legal challenges to the EO, both joined by Rayfield and other Democratic state officials. But Monday’s ruling nullified one of those injunctions—the court’s 6-3 conservative majority holding the lawsuit had been filed prematurely before new rules had taken effect at the postal service.
On Tuesday, Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read issued a directive ordering state elections officials to conduct the upcoming midterm election under existing state law.
And Wednesday, Rayfield joined a new version of the multistate lawsuit SCOTUS struck down on Monday. The new lawsuit targets the new USPS rules and not Trump’s executive order, like the earlier lawsuit.
It’s one of 76 pieces of litigation against the Trump administration filed or joined by Rayfield’s DOJ since Rayfield took office in 2024.
Also Wednesday, federal district Judge Indira Talwani withdrew her order in the other lawsuit against USPS. That suit, filed by the League of Women Voters, could potentially be joined with the complaint by Rayfield and other blue-state attorneys general.
Gov. Tina Kotek supported the filing in a statement Wednesday.
“In Oregon, we uplift the right to vote and have worked hard to strengthen and expand our system to ensure everyone has a voice and that every election is safe and secure,” she writes. “I stand in strong support of Attorney General Rayfield’s fight against President Trump’s unconstitutional, undemocratic attempt to silence people’s voices. We’re doing everything in our power to protect Oregonians’ right to vote.”
