The District of Columbia city council is elected on a partisan basis. When Congress passed the home rule law for D.C., it provided that two city council-at-large members should be elected in every even-numbered year. To guard against a City Council that consisted only of Democrats, the law also said that no party could run more than one candidate for City Council-at-Large. Traditionally, that made it possible for either a D.C. Statehood Party member, or a Republican, to be elected.

This year, Michael Brown (son of former Clinton cabinet member Ron Brown) won the non-Democratic Party seat. He had switched his voter registration to “independent” in May 2008, and qualified as an independent. But the Republican Party is suing the board, arguing that Brown has always been “affiliated” with the Democratic Party. Here is the Republican Party’s brief, filed December 12.