On August 11, both sides in the lawsuit Johnson v Commission on Presidential Debates ask U.S. District Court Judge Rosemary Collyer to correct one of the errors in her August 5 opinion. The opinion said that Gary Johnson and Jill Stein were alleging that in 2012, President Obama and Mitt Romney themselves decided on the 15% polling threshold. Both sides want the opinion revised to delete this allegation. The 15% rule has always been the product of the Commission itself.
The two sides did not ask Judge Collyer to alter any of her factual errors about which minor party and independent presidential candidates have been on the ballot in states containing a majority of the electoral college. Her opinion omitted Ralph Nader for 2004, but erroneously included Virgil Goode for 2012.
I seem to recall that the commission didn’t have the 15% rule originally, but only first required that a Presidential candidate be on enough state ballots with sufficient electoral votes theoretically to win the election, and that the 15% rule was added later. Am I mistaken?
The history of the 15% rule is discussed here:
https://www.publicintegrity.org/2008/09/18/3057/two-party-debates