Judge agrees to expedite Washington AG’s lawsuit against USPS changes
Aug 28, 2020, 5:19 AM | Updated: 5:19 am
A United States Postal Service (USPS) mail box stands in Manhattan on August 05, 2020 in New York City. The nation’s national mail carrier service is under increased scrutiny from politicians who are warning that the agency is not prepared to handle the tens of millions of mail-in ballots which are expected to be sent for the November election. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
(Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
A federal judge granted a motion from Attorney General Bob Ferguson on Thursday to expedite a multi-state lawsuit against recent changes enacted by the U.S. Postal Service.
AG Bob Ferguson won’t drop USPS lawsuit
Ferguson’s lawsuit seeks to end all of the reductions to the USPS enacted by Trump-appointed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, which include plans to halt the processing of outgoing mail at three out of five Washington USPS distribution centers in Wenatchee, Yakima, and Tacoma.
Other cuts included the elimination of overtime, decommissioning mail sorting machines, removing mailboxes, and no longer treating election mail as first-class mail, regardless of postage paid.
Washington state is leading the multi-state lawsuit, joined by Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin.
Thursday’s ruling expedited the discovery process in the lawsuit, giving the Trump administration 10 days to answer questions from plaintiffs and provide evidence and documents.
“This case is unlike any other case this court has been involved in,” U.S. District Court Judge Stanley Bastian said in his ruling. “Time is of the essence and because of this, there is good cause for expedited discovery. We don’t have much time between now and the election. I think everyone on this call wants their vote to be counted.”
#BREAKING A federal judge just granted our motion for expedited discovery in our lawsuit to protect the USPS. The judge ordered the Trump Administration to respond to our questions with evidence and documents in 10 days. The election is 67 days away. Time is of the essence.
— Bob Ferguson (@BobFergusonAG) August 27, 2020
Washington Secretary of State Kim Wyman has assured the state’s voters that recent cuts to the USPS won’t impact the timely delivery of ballots, and on Wednesday, issued an emergency rule change that requires county officials to use first-class mail at least 15 days before Election Day when sending ballots to voters in October.
Even so, there are still concerns both locally and in many of the states adjoined to the lawsuit.
Seattle-area postal workers ‘don’t see a plan’ to fix machines
Roughly 40% of letter-sorting machines in the Seattle-Tacoma area postal service processing plants were decommissioned prior to DeJoy pausing the changes he had enacted. Five of those machines at a Tacoma plant were restored last week, while two others were repurposed to boost sorting capacity for other functioning machines. A machine in Wenatchee was also reinstalled.
Local USPS authorities say that the re-installation of those machines was done with the approval of the federal government. That being so, DeJoy has said numerous times that there are no large-scale plans to turn decommissioned sorting machines back on.
