On March 10, Steven Linnabary filed a lawsuit in the Ohio Supreme Court, hoping to win a court order that he should be restored to the May 6 Libertarian primary ballot. State ex rel Linnabary v Husted, 14-0359. He is running for Attorney General.

The issues are whether his primary petitions are invalid because the circulators didn’t fill out the “employer” blank, and whether the person who filed the challenge to Linnabary’s petition is entitled to object, given that he had never voted in a Libertarian Party primary in the past and had never voted for a Libertarian in a general election. The law says that an objector to a primary petition must be a member of that party.

Linnabary filed in State Supreme Court because he was not a plaintiff in the federal case, in contrast to the party’s gubernatorial candidate, Charlie Earl. So the issue of petition validity for Libertarian statewide candidates is now pending in two courts, U.S. District Court and the State Supreme Court. Persons interested in this issue may want to read Linnabary’s brief especially because it contains the 18-page finding of the Secretary of State’s hearing officer on why he recommended removing the candidates. His finding says past directives of the Secretary of State saying petitions should not be invalidated just because the circulator didn’t include his or her employer aren’t binding. His Report says these past directives only applied to particular initiative petitions and they don’t have lasting effect.