On August 5, U.S. District Court Judge Emily C. Marks, a Trump appointee, upheld the Alabama practice of giving a free list of the registered voters to the qualified parties, but not to parties that are petitioning. Libertarian Party of Alabama v Merrill, m.d., 2:19cv-69. Here is the 24-page opinion. The Libertarian Party, or any petitioning party, would need to pay the state approximately $36,000 to obtain the list.

The ruling contradicts a summary affirmance of the U.S. Supreme Court, Socialist Workers Party v Rockefeller, 314 F.Supp. 984 (s.d. N.Y. 1970), 400 U.S. 173 (1970). Footnote four mentions this case but says summary affirmances are only binding when they cover “the precise issues presented and necessarily decided by those actions.” That is correct, but in this case, the issues in both cases were precisely the same. In the New York 1970 case, the Socialist Workers Party and the Socialist Labor Party were about to petition to get on the New York ballot. They filed the lawsuit in order to get the free list of registered voters, to help them with their petition drives, which at the time required 12,000 signatures. They won the case and the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed it. Judge Marks did not explain why she thinks the issues in that case were different than the issues in the current Libertarian case.

As to all the other uncontradicted precedents on the side of the Libertarian Party, Judge Marks said they aren’t binding in her court (none of them was from a state in the Eleventh Circuit). It is very likely that the Alabama Libertarian Party will appeal.

Judge Marks said the state interest in not providing the list are “a proprietary interest in receiving compensation for taxpayers, distinguishing parties with a modicum of support before turning over proprietary information, administrative ease of determining which groups are entitled to the list, maintaining stability of the political system by only providing lists to parties with support in the electorate, not subsidizing entities that consider themselves to be political parties but are more like interest groups, limiting demands on the elections divisoin staff, increasing the number of entities required to pay for proprietary information, not subsidizing groups engaged in political satire, and not facilitating fraud.”