The U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, will hold an oral argument on November 9, 2011, in Initiative & Referendum Institute v U.S. Postal Service, 10-5337. This is the case over the constitutionality of the post office’s ban on petitioning on all interior postal sidewalks. The case was filed in 2000.
The U.S. Court of Appeals already ruled in August 2005 that the petitioning ban for postal sidewalks parallel to the street is unconstitutional. At that time, the Appeals court sent the case back to the U.S. District Court to settle the interior sidewalks issue. The lower court delayed the case for years, and then ruled in favor of the postal regulation.
UPDATE: the three judges will be Karen L. Henderson, Janice Rogers Brown, and Thomas B. Griffith. Judge Brown wrote the decision in Boardley v U.S. Department of the Interior, 615 F.3d 508 (2010) which struck down rigid rules on First Amendment activity in national parks. Judge Henderson was on the panel in this same post office lawsuit in 2005, in which the three Appeals judges ruled favorably on postal sidewalks parallel to the street.
One of THE all time longest election law cases EVER ???
How about a special N judge court for election law cases ONLY ???
See the special courts for patents, etc.
In fiction, we have Bleak House by Dickens, and also The Makropoulos Case, the opera, both about court cases over inheritance that lasted decades.
The fact that petition circulators are barred from most Post Offices in the US has caused immense damage to the cause of ballot access.
Does “interior” sidewalk also apply to “sidewalks” (walkways) next to the parking lot at strip malls where most USPS (that’s U.S. Postal “Service”, not U.S. “Post Office”) lease their space and then claim that the mall corporation prohibits it?
Does this case apply to USPS as well as USPO? There IS a legal difference.