WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court has denied the Trump administration’s request to let the U.S. Postal Service enforce new restrictions for mail-in ballots, handing the Justice Department another setback as it urges the Supreme Court to intervene ahead of the November midterm elections.

The order on Thursday from the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals leaves in place a lower court injunction that bars administration officials from making the controversial mail-in ballot rule changes mandatory for the Nov. 3 contest, when Republicans will defend their slim majority in Congress.

The appeals court’s latest order tees up the fight for the Supreme Court. The Justice Department filed a request for emergency action from the conservative-majority high court before the 1st Circuit announced its ruling — attempting to skip the intermediate court given the imminent election calendar — but the justices haven’t acted yet.

The latest briefs were filed in the Supreme Court earlier in the day Thursday.

The three-judge 1st Circuit panel found that a Boston federal district judge who blocked the Postal Service rules “made detailed findings about the chaos and widespread disenfranchisement that would occur” between now and Nov. 3 if they took effect right away.

The administration has “not even seriously challenged this aspect of the district court’s ruling, much less demonstrated why it is clearly erroneous,” the court held.

Spokespeople for the Justice Department and the Postal Service did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Ballot Envelopes

The policy changes would require states to submit information about each resident set to receive a mail-in ballot to a newly created federal “portal” and to meet revised ballot envelope design standards that include a barcode matching the voter information in the portal. Postal authorities would be empowered to return ballots to state officials if they don’t comply and refuse to deliver them to voters.

The 1st Circuit agreed with the district court that the Democratic state officials and voting rights advocacy groups that sued are likely to win their claim that the Postal Service’s plan violates the Constitution, which puts states and Congress in charge of dictating how elections are run.

“To label this final rule as merely a ‘modest’ regulation of the mails is to focus on the trees while ignoring the forest,” the panel wrote. The decision was delivered by Judges Gustavo Gelpí, Julie Rikelman and Seth Aframe, all appointed to the appeals court by former President Joe Biden.

North Carolina began sending out mail ballots Sept. 4, kicking off the early voting period. That milestone was widely seen as an informal deadline for the courts to resolve the question of whether the Postal Service could require states to comply with the contested rules if they want their ballots delivered.

At least a dozen states are preparing to send ballots by the middle of the month. Democratic state officials who sued warned courts that it was too late to make substantive changes to their voting processes for this election cycle.

The cases are 26-2029, League of Women Voters of Massachusetts v. Trump, and 26-2031, California v. U.S. Postal Service, 26-2031, U.S. Court of Appeals, 1st Circuit.

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