On June 3, the Illinois Libertarian Party filed a brief in U.S. District Court in Chicago, asking that the Illinois “full-slate” law be held unconstitutional. This is the law that requires newly-qualifying parties (but no other parties) to run a full slate of candidates when they petition. Last year the Court enjoined the law and suggested it is unconstitutional, but now the party seeks a formal declaration that the law is unconstitutional.

The “full-slate” law is especially injurious to minor parties when they try to run for county partisan office. The law doesn’t have any effect for U.S. House elections, or legislative elections, because those are elections in which the voters of any particular part of the state are only electing one office-holder anyway. But when parties try to run a single nominee for a county legislative body, usually that county is electing several office-holders from a single district, sometimes as many as six. Also, of course, the law creates a problem when a party wants to run for one, or several, county executive offices, but not all of them. The candidate-plaintiff in this lawsuit, Julie Fox, wanted to run for Auditor of Kane County in 2012, but she was not permitted to petition for a place on the ballot as a Libertarian unless the party nominated a full slate of all the executive positions.