WASHINGTON — Postmaster General Louis DeJoy was ordered to immediately begin expanding mail delivery with extra trips and later deliveries after the U.S. Postal Service failed to improve performance less than a week before the election.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan in Washington late Tuesday granted an emergency request to enforce and monitor compliance with an earlier injunction he ordered. The ruling is a victory for civil rights groups and Democratic-led states that alleged in several lawsuits that the changes were undermining the election to the benefit of President Donald Trump.
“USPS personnel are instructed to perform late and extra trips to the maximum extent necessary to increase on-time mail deliveries, particularly for election mail,” Sullivan said. “To be clear, late and extra trips should be performed to the same or greater degree than they were performed prior to July 2020 when doing so would increase on-time mail deliveries.”
On-time delivery of First Class mail dropped to 69.8 percent on Tuesday, down more than 6 percentage points from previous days, the USPS said in a court filing Wednesday.
