On August 23, a Nevada state trial court held a hearing in Rockefeller v Aguilar, Carson City District Court 24OC-00107.  This is the case in which a Democratic Party activist is suing the Secretary of State to remove Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., from the ballot.

The Secretary of State had determined that the petition has enough valid signatures.  The lawsuit charges that Kennedy is ineligible because he was a registered Democrat, and also that he can’t be an independent candidate in Nevada because he is the nominee of some one-state minor parties elsewhere in the nation.  Both of these claims are entirely without merit.  No presidential candidate has ever been removed from a general election ballot on the grounds of how he or she was registered.  John Anderson was affiliated with the Republican Party all during 1980 and he qualified as an independent in all states, and no one even challenged him on that basis.  Lawsuits that did challenge Kanye West’s independent petitions in 2020 in Arizona and Idaho on the grounds that he was a registered Republican in Wyoming were both rejected.

At the hearing, the judge asked both sides if the case should be considered moot.  There is no decision yet.  Ironically, Nevada is one of the swing states, and on August 23 Kennedy said he wants to withdraw his name from the ballot in swing states.  Yet he can’t withdraw in Nevada because the deadline to withdraw was August 20.  So he will appear on the Nevada ballot unless the court rules that he isn’t eligible to be an independent candidate.