On April 29, the Eleventh Circuit ruled that the plaintiffs in Jacobson v Lee, 19-14552, don’t have standing to challenge the Florida law that has put the Republican Party nominees on the top line of the ballot for the last twenty years. They also said the case is flawed because the plaintiffs should have sued the county election officials instead of the Secretary of state.

The U.S. District Court had invalidated the law.

The three judges were William Pryor, a Bush Jr. appointee; Jill Pryor, an Obama appointee; and Robert Luck, a Trump appointee. All three judges agreed that the plaintiffs lacked standing. The Florida Democratic Party was not a plaintiff, but the Democratic National Committee was. It is unclear if the case could be refiled with the Florida Democratic Party as a plaintiff.

Judge Jill Pryor thought that the Secretary of State was a proper defendant.

Judge William Pryor wrote separately (even though he wrote the majority opinion) to say that he thinks ballot order cannot be adjudicated in federal court becaues it is a “political question”, but the other two judges didn’t agree with that idea. Judge William Pryor feels that because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that partisan gerrymandering cases can’t be considered by federal courts, therefore ballot order cases can’t either.