On July 31, the Eleventh Circuit heard Independent Party of Florida v Lee, 20-12107. The Eleventh Circuit does not make recordings of oral arguments available on its website. The three judges are William Pryor (a Bush Jr. appointee), Robin Rosenbaum (Obama), and Robert J. Luck (Trump). The issue is the 2011 Florida law that said even though a party is ballot-qualified, it can’t be on for president unless it is either recognized as a national committee by the Federal Election Commission, or unless it submits 132,781 signatures by July 15.

A few days before the hearing, the panel had asked the attorneys to discuss whether the parties have standing, because they did not try to petition. But three U.S. Supreme Court opinions, and numerous lower court opinions (including some in the Eleventh Circuit), have said that minor parties and independent candidates do have standing to challenge onerous ballot access laws even if they didn’t try to comply with them. They are Williams v Rhodes, McCarthy v Briscoe, and Storer v Brown. The candidates or parties who didn’t try to petition are the Socialist Labor Party in Ohio 1968, Eugene McCarthy in Texas 1976, and Gus Hall in California 1972.