NRLCA Statement on Preserving the Foundational Purpose of the United States Postal Service and its Role in Vote by Mail

NRLCA Statement on Preserving the Foundational Purpose of the United States Postal Service and its Role in Vote by Mail

September 15, 2026
For Immediate Release

Yesterday, the Supreme Court denied the administration’s request to stay two federal injunctions blocking the Postal Service’s mail ballot rule, leaving those injunctions in place and ensuring the rule will not take effect before the 2026 midterm elections. That is good news for the tens of millions of Americans who vote by mail: for this election, ballots will continue to be handled exactly as they always have been, under state administration, without Postal Service interference. It is good news that came only because three separate federal courts, the Supreme Court included, stepped in to stop the Postal Service from doing something it should never have attempted in the first place.

On behalf of the nearly 130,000 postal employees and retirees represented by our union, we write to state, unequivocally and without qualification, our objection to any effort — legislative, regulatory, or administrative — to alter, narrow, or redefine the foundational purpose of the United States Postal Service. That purpose was fixed by Congress more than fifty years ago and has not changed: the Postal Service exists to bind this nation together by collecting and delivering the mail of every American, without discrimination and without regard to the content or purpose of what is properly placed in the mail stream. That includes the tens of millions of ballots that Americans lawfully cast by mail in every election cycle.

Our union represents rural letter carriers who deliver this nation’s ballots. The NRLCA will not stand by while the institution we serve is repurposed, hollowed out, or turned into a partisan instrument.

Congress did not leave the Postal Service’s mission to interpretation. The Postal Reorganization Act of 1970, Public Law 91-375, codified at 39 U.S.C., states the Postal Service’s purpose in plain terms at Chapter 1, Section 101 — Postal Policy:

39 U.S.C. § 101 (Pub. L. 91-375)

In its most fundamental form, an election ballot is correspondence between a citizen and their government. Any policy that treats election mail as something other than “important letter mail” deserving of the Postal Service’s highest consideration is a departure from the statute.

Furthermore, Section 403 imposes an affirmative, general duty on the Postal Service to deliver the mail:

39 U.S.C. § 403

Nowhere in the Act has Congress granted the Postal Service the power to unilaterally and arbitrarily decide which properly stamped and addressed correspondence will or will not be delivered. The only mail that may lawfully be withheld from the stream of commerce is mail Congress itself has designated undeliverable. Election mail, properly addressed and stamped, is not undeliverable mail. It must be collected and delivered like every other piece of correspondence — no more, and no less.

The Constitution and long-settled practice place the conduct of elections in the hands of the individual states, not the Postal Service. The NRLCA affirms the following as the plain and necessary consequence of that division of authority, read together with the Postal Service’s statutory duties described above:

•  Only the states — not the Postal Service, and not any other federal agency — have the authority to determine who is entitled to vote by mail.
• Any properly addressed ballot sent by a state or a state-sanctioned election authority must be collected and delivered by the Postal Service as addressed, on the same terms as every other piece of properly addressed mail.
• Only the states have the authority to determine which ballots returned through the U.S. Mail are counted and recorded in any election they conduct.
• The Postal Service’s role begins and ends with delivery. It must remain a neutral carrier of the nation’s mail, exactly as it has been from its inception — it is not, and must never become, an arbiter of who votes, how they vote, or whether their vote counts.

Unfortunately, the current leadership of the Postal Service has abdicated its responsibility as an independent agency by proposing rules to modify Congressional mandated missions and undermining the faith of this institution with the public. That is exactly what happened here. USPS published its final mail ballot rule on August 26 and pursued it through emergency appeals to the First Circuit and the Supreme Court even after two federal judges found it likely unlawful and blocked it. An agency should not need three courts to tell it to follow its own statute.

The Postal Service Board of Governors is charged by statute with directing the Postal Service’s powers and overseeing its officers to ensure it operates in accordance with the policies established by Congress. The Board cannot be a passive spectator while the Postal Service’s foundational, universal-service mission is put at risk. We call on the Board of Governors to publicly and affirmatively state that it will not permit any policy, directive, or operational change that would treat election mail differently from other important letter mail, or that would compromise the Postal Service’s neutrality. Silence from the Board on this question is not neutrality — it too is an abdication of the very oversight duty the Act assigns to it. The past several weeks are proof of that failure: it took the courts, not the Board, to stop a rule that never should have been proposed. Americans should not have to depend on litigation to enforce boundaries the Board itself exists to enforce.

The members of our union ensure that mail is delivered to every address in this country, in every election, regardless of who is on the ballot. In carrying out that duty, our members take no position on any candidate, party, or electoral outcome. We take only one position: that the Postal Service Congress created must keep doing what Congress told it to do — collect and deliver the mail of the American people, including their ballots, promptly, completely, and without discrimination.

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Established in 1903, the NRLCA represents approximately 130,000 career and non-career rural letter carriers that operate out of more than 10,500 rural and suburban postal delivery units, serving over 85,000 rural routes.

Click here to view this statement as a PDF.

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