On May 9, the U.S. Supreme Court gave permission to the attorneys for New York state to file their response brief by June 30, in Libertarian Party of New York v State Board of Elections, 22-893. This is the second time the Court has approved the state’s request for more time to respond.

This schedule means that the Court can’t possibly decide whether to hear the case until late September 2023. The issues are the ballot access changes made by the New York legislature in 2020: (1) tripling the number of signatures for a statewide independent candidate or the nominee of an unqualified party, without expanding the six-week petitioning period; (2) raising the vote test for the definition of a qualified party from a group that got 50,000 votes for Governor, to a group that got 2% of the vote for the office at the top of the ticket every two years. That works out to 172,338 votes in the November 2020 election, so the change increased the vote test by three and one-half times. Furthermore, it meant New York became one of only five states that requires a party to run a presidential nominee if it wants to gain or retain qualified status.