Earlier this year, the South Dakota petition deadline for newly-qualifying parties, which was in late March, was held unconstitutionally early in U.S. District Court. The case was Libertarian Party of South Dakota v Krebs, civ 4:15cv-4111. According to a federal law passed in 1976, when plaintiffs sue a state over voting rights (including ballot access), and win, the state must pay the attorney fees for the plaintiffs.
South Dakota did not appeal the 2018 decision, striking down the deadline, but it did contest the amount of attorneys fees that plaintiffs claimed for their attorneys, who are on the staff of the ACLU. On October 2, 2018, the U.S. District Court adjudicated the proper amount of attorney fees to be $612,045. The case lasted three years and was made especially complicated because, twice, the state partially liberalized the law while the lawsuit was underway. Every time the law changed, the issues changed and new briefs were needed.
During the lawsuit, the state had relaxed the new party petition deadline from March to July, but only if the new party were only interested in running for president and the lesser statewide executive positions. In the end, though, the deadline was held unconstitutional also for parties that wanted to run for Congress, legislature, and Governor. Here is the 10-page decision explaining the basis for the amount of filing fees. The state had argued that if the plaintiffs (the Libertarian and Constitution Parties) had chosen attorneys who reside in South Dakota, the award of attorney fees would have been much lower, because attorneys inside South Dakota charge much lower hourly rates than in the states in which the two ACLU attorneys live. But the judge declared that it was reasonable for the plaintiffs to hire experts from outside South Dakota, because the case was very complicated. Thanks to Kurt Evans for this news.
The cases are so *complicated* since the MORON judges can NOT detect *equal* in 14 Amdt, Sec. 1.
The ACLU handled this? I never knew them to do ballot access cases before now. Cool.
The ACLU does ballot access cases frequently. It won a case for the Green Party in 2006 in Arkansas, striking down the 3% petition. It is handling the California case for a registered Socialist who wanted “party preference: Socialist” on the ballot instead of “party preference: none.” It won the Connecticut case for the Libertarian Party in 2016 against the ban on out-of-state circulators. It did the Georgia 2012 Green Party case which struck down the 1% petition for presidential ballot access. It won the 2012 Montana case against the March petition deadline for non-presidential independents (Steve Kelly). It won the Nebraska case this year against the 10% petition for non-presidential independent candidates. It won the Libertarian Virginia case against the ban on out-of-state circulators.
Way back in the late 1980s and into the ’90s in Missouri the MO-ACLU helped with a few minor-party lawsuits here — and helped me a bit with lobbying for less-difficult ballot-access laws! Their local attorneys and director spoke at a few of the St Louis Area Libertarian meetings and Green Party gatherings too. And once I spoke at one of their meetings.
I’ve spoken to two of their former national directors (Glasser & Strossen) and they acknowledged that ballot-access law reform isn’t a high priority for them but one of many important issues that they are glad to assist with occasionally. During media interviews and speeches I found that they usually don’t mention ballot-access issues unless asked a specific question about it, then they give an informative answer about two-party discrimination against political minorities!
So ACLU has been quite helpful beyond the courtroom.
Since the ACLU supposedly supports speech/press stuff in 1st Amdt —
the ACLU is sort of brain dead about third parties/independents and speech/press stuff connection in election times — candidate declarations to election nights.