Speaker 1: Bloomberg Laws with June Grosso from Bloomberg Radio. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the Bloomberg Law Show. I'm June Grosso. Ahead in this hour,
Speaker 1: the legal attacks on the Post Office escalate. President Trump
Speaker 1: wants the Supreme Court to resolve with one of his
Speaker 1: Twitter problems, TikTok goes on the offensive, and Aport tosses
Speaker 1: Scott Peterson's death sentence. This week, New York and New
Speaker 1: Jersey became the latest states to sue President Trump and
Speaker 1: his Postmaster General Lewis to joy over major changes to
Speaker 1: postal service operations that resulted in mail delays across the country.
Speaker 1: It's the third multi state lawsuit file this month over
Speaker 1: the changes at the Post Office that the Democratic Attorneys
Speaker 1: General claim were meant to sabotage the election. In congressional testimony,
Speaker 1: to Joyce said he'll pause the operational changes, but he
Speaker 1: told Democratic Congressman Roe Kanna that he will not restore
Speaker 1: the mail sorting machines. Even if the machines, in your perspective,
Speaker 1: don't do anything. What is a harm to do it
Speaker 1: to election day in Washington? And it makes plenty of
Speaker 1: sense to me, it makes none. You haven't explained why
Speaker 1: and then final questions and not needed. That's why. But
Speaker 1: if it will restore people's faith in a democracy and
Speaker 1: avoid a polarized election, a billion, Get me the billion,
Speaker 1: and I'll put the machines in joining me. Is election
Speaker 1: law expert in Nate Personally, a professor at Stanford Law School.
Speaker 1: What are the grounds for these lawsuits? The States are
Speaker 1: suing the Post Office and the federal government because the
Speaker 1: decisions that were made with respect to changes in the
Speaker 1: postal system were allegedly not done in compliance with the
Speaker 1: applicable law that regulates the post Office. So they have
Speaker 1: a series of claims under the Postal Accountability and Enhancement
Speaker 1: Act to post the Reorganization Act, and other measures. And
Speaker 1: the basic idea is that you can't make these abrupt
Speaker 1: changes in the way that you did. You have to
Speaker 1: do in a more considered way. When the Postmaster General testified,
Speaker 1: he said that he would suspend any aditional changes until
Speaker 1: after the election, but he wouldn't reverse changes that have
Speaker 1: already taken place. Does that make any of the lawsuit moot?
Speaker 1: I don't think it moots the lawsuit. I think that
Speaker 1: it is still the case that the states are trying
Speaker 1: to get the post office to speed up the mail,
Speaker 1: and they're trying to use every arrow in their quiver
Speaker 1: to do that. You know, it remains to be seen
Speaker 1: if the court is going to throw this out on
Speaker 1: standing grounds, because these are sort of coherent legal theories.
Speaker 1: But I don't think the cases mooted just because he's
Speaker 1: rolling back some of the changes, because he said he's
Speaker 1: not going to roll back all of them. There's some
Speaker 1: like the removal of sorting machines that are not going
Speaker 1: to be reinstated. This is the third lawsuit filed this month,
Speaker 1: covering about twenty three states. Now why three different lawsuits?
Speaker 1: Are there any substantive differences among them, or is it
Speaker 1: just to take advantage of different courts. Well, I think
Speaker 1: the changes and the differences between the lawsuits come in
Speaker 1: part because of the different visions of the attorneys general
Speaker 1: who are filing these cases. But I think also it
Speaker 1: has to do with different legal theories. Some of the
Speaker 1: other cases are grounded on a right to vote theory
Speaker 1: that basically what the Post Office is doing is violating
Speaker 1: the voting rights of people who want to vote by mail,
Speaker 1: whereas some of these lawsuits are more on the procedures
Speaker 1: that were used in the determinations that were made by
Speaker 1: the Post Office to make these changes. In the Pennsylvania lawsuits,
Speaker 1: the United States responded that the states don't have standing
Speaker 1: to sue the federal government, which you mentioned before, on
Speaker 1: behalf of citizens, because any future injuries would be speculative.
Speaker 1: Is that likely a winning argument? Well, that's a typical
Speaker 1: argument that you get in cases like this. There are
Speaker 1: only certain situations in which the states are allowed to
Speaker 1: sue the federal government. And the question is are they
Speaker 1: suing in their sovereign capacity sort of as states? Are
Speaker 1: they suing on behalf of their citizens? And there is
Speaker 1: a famous case dealing with ep A regulations Massachusetts versus E.
Speaker 1: P A a while ago that weighed in on that topic.
Speaker 1: And you know, this is one of these ongoing questions,
Speaker 1: especially in these highly charged political cases, which is whether
Speaker 1: the states have sort of independent cause of action, whether
Speaker 1: they have been injured in a concrete way that's not
Speaker 1: speculative in your legal opinion, To the states have standing here, Well,
Speaker 1: I think it really does depend on how close the
Speaker 1: link is from what the Post Office is doing to
Speaker 1: the effects on individual people who are receiving and sending mail.
Speaker 1: So that's sort of an advidentiary question. We still don't
Speaker 1: really know the effect of the individual policy changes, although
Speaker 1: it looks like from the graphs that were submitted as
Speaker 1: part of the litigation that there was a significant drop
Speaker 1: off and delay in mail starting in June when a
Speaker 1: lot of these changes happened. I think that someone will
Speaker 1: have standing to litigate these cases, and the question is
Speaker 1: whether it could be resolved before the election. I'm skeptical
Speaker 1: that that will happen, but you know, as in many
Speaker 1: political cases, the main force here is to just expose
Speaker 1: what the Post Office is doing and to try to
Speaker 1: get them to reverse course. That was my next question.
Speaker 1: Can they move these cases fast enough to get them
Speaker 1: resolved and any changes put into place before the election.
Speaker 1: I think the primary solution here is a political one,
Speaker 1: to make sure that there's enough pressure that's put on
Speaker 1: officials so that they deliver the mail on time, especially
Speaker 1: with respect to the election mail. And I would be
Speaker 1: surprised if you had a court order that sort of
Speaker 1: reversed some of these policies, because you know, as frustrating
Speaker 1: as it is, it's not like you have a legal
Speaker 1: right to have a letter sent and delivered to you.
Speaker 1: Within three days or something like that. And so you know,
Speaker 1: we've had late mail for for many years. The question
Speaker 1: is when does it become so late and the process
Speaker 1: by which they've made these decisions become so arbitrary that
Speaker 1: you have a legal claim. And we're seeing similar kinds
Speaker 1: of lawsuits in the immigration realm and other settings. Given
Speaker 1: the fact that the administration has made serious changes to
Speaker 1: the administrative state, I have to ask you if there's
Speaker 1: any truth to President Trump's repeated claims that widespread mail
Speaker 1: and voting leads to ballot fraud. The debate over mail
Speaker 1: in voting is over whether you're a Republican secretary of
Speaker 1: state Democratic secretary of state. There is broad consensus once
Speaker 1: you get away from the national debate, there's broad consensus
Speaker 1: that male voting can be done in a way that
Speaker 1: is not leading to fraud. We don't have a significant
Speaker 1: history of fraud in the states that have male voting,
Speaker 1: and for that matter, these states, almost all the battleground
Speaker 1: states are moving to absentee balloting um, which is the
Speaker 1: kind of balloting that and voting that the president and
Speaker 1: his family do. So I think that it's become a
Speaker 1: distraction really to start talking about all vote by mail,
Speaker 1: since the most important states are gonna be just doing
Speaker 1: absentee voting. Well, President Trump is at times the master
Speaker 1: of distraction. Will it lead though too inevitable lawsuits if
Speaker 1: he loses about mail and balloting and fraud? If the
Speaker 1: election is close, you can be sure that there will
Speaker 1: be many lawsuits challenging many aspects of the election infrastructure.
Speaker 1: And given that you'll have roughly half of the American
Speaker 1: population upwards of you know, sixty to seventy million people
Speaker 1: voting by mail or through mail ballots, then you should
Speaker 1: expect that that will be one of the real foci
Speaker 1: of of litigation. That's what people are going to be
Speaker 1: concentrating on. When I read the complaint in the New
Speaker 1: York suit, it made allegations that Secretary of the Treasury
Speaker 1: Minution had been directly interfering with the Post Office in
Speaker 1: the month prior to the resignation of David Williams from
Speaker 1: the Board of Governors. Why wasn't he brought in as
Speaker 1: a main party on the lawsuit? In general, you don't
Speaker 1: sue different cabinet officials who may have exerted pressure on agencies. Um.
Speaker 1: The question is whether the government behaved in a way
Speaker 1: contrary to law. However, that's incredibly important evidence if you're
Speaker 1: trying to say that the articulated reason for changing policy
Speaker 1: was not actually the one that they they said, but
Speaker 1: was pretext for political motives. And so it's very similar
Speaker 1: to what happened in the case dealing with the census,
Speaker 1: where the allegation was that this was being done, that
Speaker 1: that the addition of a citizenship question on the census
Speaker 1: was being done for political reasons, not for um, the
Speaker 1: reasons that the Secretary of Commerce said or that the
Speaker 1: others in the administration said. And so if you have
Speaker 1: evidence of political interference, that could undermine the case that
Speaker 1: it was done for neutral reasons. There's a Trump campaign
Speaker 1: lawsuit over ballot drop boxes in Pennsylvania and a federal
Speaker 1: judge put it on hold so that the state courts
Speaker 1: could decide the matter or rule on the matter further.
Speaker 1: What is the import of that? Is that very important
Speaker 1: or is it just a procedural thing. I think it
Speaker 1: is an important case. It's an important case for Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: but it's an important case uh nationally to signaling about
Speaker 1: the different ways that people can deposit their mail ballot
Speaker 1: because at the same time that we're complaining about the
Speaker 1: postal service and that President Trump is complaining about vote
Speaker 1: by mail. Um. The use of ballot drop boxes is
Speaker 1: a in somebody's a more secure, less male intensive way
Speaker 1: of getting these mail ballots into the hands of election officials.
Speaker 1: And so if they are ruled to be illegal in
Speaker 1: under Pennsylvania law, that will remove one other way that
Speaker 1: um of people would be able to drop off their
Speaker 1: ballot um. And and it just creates greater reliance either
Speaker 1: on in person voting or on the mail itself. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then where they've been used, um, In the vote
Speaker 1: by mail states, they are used, you know, quite frequently.
Speaker 1: And so Colorado, for example, which is all vote by mail. Um,
Speaker 1: it's sort of a misnomer because of the voters in
Speaker 1: Colorado actually drop off the ballot in a ballot drop box,
Speaker 1: not in the with the postal service. That's Nate Personally
Speaker 1: of Stanford Law School. And that's it for this edition
Speaker 1: of Bloomberg Law. I'm June Grosso. Thanks so much for listening,
Speaker 1: and remember to tune into The Bloomberg Law Show every
Speaker 1: weeknight at ten pm Eastern. I'm Bloomberg Radio