On February 6, Newt Gingrich withdrew from the lawsuit Perry v Judd, which was filed last year to challenge Virginia’s ban on out-of-state circulators. The case is still alive because Jon Huntsman and Rick Santorum intervened in the case earlier, and they haven’t withdrawn. UPDATE: according to this Washington Post story, Huntsman and Santorum also withdrew, so the case is finished before it could achieve anything worthwhile.

If one of them remains in the case, it can still proceed to a declaratory judgment. U.S. District Court Judge John A. Gibney already wrote in this case, “It is highly unlikely that the residency requirement will withstand the First Amendment challenge.” He also said, “The Court agrees with the rationale in Nader v Brewer.” Nader v Brewer is a 9th circuit case that struck down Arizona’s ban on out-of-state petitioners.

However, Judge Gibney was only dealing with injunctive relief. He hasn’t formally made a decision on whether the Virginia restriction on out-of-state circulators is unconstitutional. If all the intervenors withdraw from the lawsuit, there won’t be a decision on declaratory relief and the entire case will have achieved nothing.

Similarly, in 1992, the Alaska Libertarian and U.S. Taxpayers Parties won injunctive relief against Alaska’s early August petition deadline for presidential petitions. But because they never went back and got declaratory relief, the law was never held unconstitutionally early and survives to this day. Also, in Hawaii in 1986, the Libertarian Party got an injunction against Hawaii’s April petition deadline for new parties, but because the party never went back and got a declaratory judgment, the law was not struck down, and since then Hawaii has made the deadline even earlier, and moved it to February. Thanks to Josh Gerstein for this news.