On October 7, U.S. District Court Judge Keith Watkins issued this order, explaining why he didn’t grant injunctive relief putting Rocky De La Fuente on the ballot. De La Fuente had been put on the ballot after his petition was found to be valid, but then the state removed him because he had run in the Alabama Democratic presidential primary this year.

The case is not yet decided, and further briefs will explore whether there is really a state interest in preventing “party splintering”. The United States signed the Document of the Copenhagen Meeting of CSCE on 1990. We, and the other signing nations, agreed that our election law would establish “a clear separation between the State and political parties; in particular, political parties will not be merged with the State.”

Federalist Paper #10 says that parties are a necessary evil, but that to counter the evil effects of parties, it is important that there be multiple parties, not just two parties. James Madison wrote, “The increased variety of parties comprised within the Union increases the security (of the nation).” Judge Watkins believes that the public interest would be injured if Republican presidential candidates this year such as Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz had been legally permitted to bolt the Republican Party and run as independents. But one can argue, and many political scientists do argue, that party splintering is a normal, healthy process by which parties evolve. Certainly when the Republican Party was formed on July 6, 1854, that event splintered the Whig Party. The northern Whigs switched to the Republican Party, in the middle of an election year, and that was just natural evolution.

Judge Watkins relies on language in Storer v Brown, a 1974 case that said there is a state interest in preventing party splintering. But since 1974, the law has changed, and the U.S. Supreme Court has issued Tashjian v Republican Party of Connecticut, Eu v San Francisco County Democratic Party, and California Democratic Party v Jones, all decisions that emphasize political parties are private entities with autonomy under the freedom of association clause of the First Amendment. Therefore, it follows that there is no state interest in propping them up with election laws that make it impossible for politicians to leave those parties if they deem it wise to do so.