On May 12, the 4th circuit heard arguments in Lux v Judd, 10-1997. This is the case that challenges Virginia’s law making it illegal for anyone to circulate a petition for a candidate for U.S. House of Representatives, if that petitioner doesn’t live in the district. The U.S. District Court had upheld the law. The plaintiff, Herb Lux, had tried to get on the ballot in 2010 as an independent. He doesn’t live in the district he was running in. The state invalidated all the signatures he had collected for himself, because he doesn’t live in the district. The U.S. Constitution provides that candidates need not live in the district they are seeking to represent, so Virginia accepted him as a potential candidate, but said only residents could circulate his petition.

The three judges were Allyson Duncan, a Bush Jr. appointee from North Carolina; G. Steven Agee, a Bush. Jr. appointee from Virginia; and David Norton, a Bush Sr. appointee from South Carolina. The state tried to argue that the case is moot, but the judges didn’t seem to accept that argument. The judges seemed surprised that the only state interest asserted by Virginia is that the residency requirement guarantees that the candidate has a modicum of support within the district. This is a weak argument, because ever since the U.S. Supreme Court decision Meyer v Grant in 1988, no state has been permitted to stop anyone from paying anyone else to circulate a petition. Therefore, since any candidate is potentially free to hire residents of the district and pay them, the residency requirement is clearly not an indicator that all the candidate’s circulators necessarily support him or her.