On April 24, U.S. District Court Judge John Jones issued a procedural ruling in De La Fuente v Cortes, m.d., 1:16cv-1696. He gave the plaintiff-candidate, Rocky De La Fuente, permission to amend his complaint. The case challenges the action of Pennsylvania election officials, who rejected De La Fuente’s petition (as an independent presidential candidate) last year on the grounds that he had run in the 2016 Democratic Pennsylvania presidential primary. Last year, after the election, De La Fuente had asked to amend his complaint in order to strengthen his case, but the state had then tried to persuade the judge not to allow him to amend his complaint.

There is no precedent as to whether Pennsylvania’s sore loser law applies to presidential primaries. John Anderson set such precedents in twenty states in 1980, all agreeing that sore loser laws don’t pertain to presidential primaries. Unfortunately, in 1980 Anderson didn’t get on the Pennsylvania Republican presidential primary ballot. Even though Anderson only needed 1,000 signatures of registered Republicans, his Pennsylvania primary petition drive failed. So, no Pennsylvania precedent was ever set, except that Pennsylvania did count Anderson’s write-ins in the Pennsylvania Republican presidential primary, and of course also allowed him on the ballot as an independent in November.