Rocky De La Fuente, an independent presidential candidate last year, currently is suing California over its requirement that independent presidential candidates in 2016 needed 178,039 signatures. On March 10, De La Fuente argued in the Ninth Circuit that the U.S. District Court that denied his request to be put on the ballot should be instructed not to depend on the Hawaii precedent Nader v Cronin.

The U.S. District Court last year had denied De La Fuente’s request to be put on the ballot, on the basis that his lawsuit was unlikely to win. The U.S. District Court in 2016 noted that the Ninth Circuit in 2010 had upheld Hawaii’s 2004 independent presidential petition requirement of 3,711 signatures. The U.S. District Court in 2016 said that because Hawaii required 1% of the last presidential vote, and California requires 1% of the number of registered voters, the cases are virtually the same, and therefore the California De La Fuente case is very unlikely to win.

The U.S. District Court in California still hasn’t ruled on whether the California law is constitutional, and will do so in the future. But in the meantime, De La Fuente wanted the Ninth Circuit to tell the U.S. District Court not to rely so heavily on the Hawaii case. But the Ninth Circuit, which heard this case on March 10, seemed inclined to stay out of the case at this point, and not consider that issue until after the U.S. District Court rules on declaratory relief. The three judges who heard the case on March 10 were Marsha Berzon, Morgan Christen, and Richard Paez. The hearing only lasted 10 minutes.