On August 15, U.S. District Court Judge Karen Schreier declined to put the South Dakota Constitution Party nominees for U.S. Senate and state house on the November ballot. Libertarian Party of South Dakota v Krebs, 4:15cv-4111. The five-page decision says that the amended complaint in the case only sought relief for presidential candidates, so the court can’t go beyond the scope of the presidential election.

The reason the amended complaint only sought relief for presidential candidates is that when that amended complaint was filed, the state law appeared to block minor parties from being on the ballot for president unless they submitted a petition for party status by March 29. After the amended complaint was filed, the state re-interpreted its law and said that the actual deadline for a party petition was in July of election years, if they only wanted to be on for president and the various state partisan offices for which no party nominates by primary.

If the plaintiffs, the Libertarian Party and the Constitution Party, had known the state was going to re-interpret its law in a permissive direction after the amended complaint was filed, then the amended complaint would have been worded differently. The case is still alive and a decision on declaratory relief will be issued in the future.