# Indira Talwani **Indira Talwani** (b. 1960, Englewood, New Jersey) is a U.S. District Judge for the District of Massachusetts and, in the autumn of 2026, the trial judge in the litigation over [[Executive Order 14399]] and the [[USPS Federal Ballot Mail Portal]] — the Trump administration's attempt to make the Postal Service a gatekeeper for mail ballots in the [[2026 Midterm Elections]]. Every order in that sequence at the district level — the June 25 injunction, the August 11 nationwide injunction, the August 27 temporary restraining order and the September 4 preliminary injunction — is hers. ## Background Talwani took a B.A. from Radcliffe College in 1982 and a J.D. from Berkeley Law in 1988, clerked for Judge Stanley A. Weigel of the Northern District of California, and spent twenty-five years in private practice — in San Francisco from 1989 to 1999 and in Boston from 1999 to 2014. Barack Obama first nominated her on September 24, 2013 (the nomination lapsed without a vote), renominated her on January 6, 2014 to the seat vacated by Mark L. Wolf, and the Senate confirmed her on May 8, 2014; her commission issued May 12, 2014. She was the first judge of Asian descent on an Article III court in Massachusetts. ## The ballot-mail litigation (2026) Two consolidated cases put the Postal Service rule in front of her: *League of Women Voters of Massachusetts v. Trump*, No. 26-cv-11549, brought by the [[League of Women Voters]] with other voter groups and individual mail voters, and a parallel suit by twenty-four Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia led by California. A dozen Republican-led states, represented chiefly by Missouri Solicitor General Louis J. Capozzi III, intervened on the government's side. The **September 3, 2026** hearing in Boston, held the day before Massachusetts began mailing ballots, was the first to reach the merits rather than ripeness. Talwani pressed Justice Department lawyer Michael Velchik on whether the Portal was ready at all — "We are 70 days from the election and I have nothing from the USPS about how this will happen" — and when he would say only that he could not "make specific representations," gave the government until 3 p.m. to supplement the record, warning that otherwise she would "assume it's not finalized yet." The declaration that arrived, from USPS Chief Customer and Marketing Officer Steven Monteith, said the Portal would be available "for voluntary use by sometime next week." She was equally pointed with the intervening states: "Why is it you want U.S.P.S. to stop batches of ballots from your voters? ... You can decide you want those measures in your state." When Capozzi proposed letting willing states comply as a real-world test, she answered: "We're not talking about an intellectual puzzle game. We're talking about people's right to vote." That afternoon — before she had ruled — Solicitor General [[D. John Sauer]] filed an emergency application at the Supreme Court (No. 26A297) asking the justices to let the rule take effect. On the night of **September 4** Talwani granted the preliminary injunction, replacing the TRO that would have expired September 10, finding that "immediate implementation of the Final Rule issued less than seventy days before the November 2026 election threatens disenfranchisement of millions of United States citizens who seek to vote by mail," and that "the record includes no evidence relating to fraudulent mail voting to support the rushed implementation." ## The Supreme Court leaves her injunction standing On the night of **Monday, September 14, 2026**, the Supreme Court **denied** the government's stay application — by then refiled as No. 26A305, *U.S. Postal Service v. California*, the original No. 26A297 having been mooted by her preliminary injunction and withdrawn on September 6. The unsigned order held that the government was "unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge to" her preliminary injunction. Justice Kavanaugh concurred; Justices Alito and Thomas dissented. The practical result is that Talwani's September 4 order governs the November 3 election: the Postal Service may not refuse to carry ballot mail, and may not require states to load voter information into the [[USPS Federal Ballot Mail Portal]]. It is a notable reversal of posture from three weeks earlier, when the same Court had stayed her June order in *Alabama v. California*. The distinguishing fact the Court appears to have credited is the one she put at the center of her own opinion — proximity to the election, and a rule issued fewer than seventy days before it. The full sequence, including the Supreme Court's August 24 stay of her June order, is on [[USPS Federal Ballot Mail Portal]] and [[Executive Order 14399]]. ## See Also - [[USPS Federal Ballot Mail Portal]] — the system she enjoined - [[Executive Order 14399]] — the order behind it - [[D. John Sauer]] — who took the case over her head to the Supreme Court - [[Mail-in Voting]] — the practice at stake - [[League of Women Voters]] — lead plaintiff - [[Carl Nichols]] — the D.C. judge hearing the parallel Democratic Party challenge to the same rule, and reaching the opposite result