On January 17, attorneys for the state of Hawaii filed this brief in Democratic Party of Hawaii v Nago, 16-652. The Democratic Party of Hawaii does not want to be forced to nominate its candidates in an open primary, because the party believes that persons hostile to the party are voting in its primary. There is no way to know which voters choose to vote in the Hawaii Democratic Party. The lower federal courts refused any relief to the party because the party didn’t present concrete evidence that is being harmed. The party then asked to U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case.
The state’s brief argues that the Court should not hear this case for procedural reasons.
I thought that the court had ruled in the past that a party’s freedom of association protected its right to decide this for itself.
The problem is how much evidence is needed. The US Supreme Court has never ruled on open primaries for office other than president. In 2000 the US Supreme Court did invalidate blanket primaries if the parties required to hold them object. That case, which was from California, did have lots of evidence. The Hawaii Democratic Party case lacks a similar amount of evidence.
Hawaii does not have a blanket primary.
When the Washington blanket primary was overturned by the 9th Circuit, the judges ruled that voters thought of themselves as Republicans or Democrats when they voted, and therefore the Washington blanket primary was indistinguishable from that in California, even though there was no government records of the political beliefs of its citizens. Washington then adopted the Pick-a-Party primary, which is quite similar to the system used in Hawaii.
Voters in Washington rejected the regimentation of the Pick-a-Party primary and adopted the Top 2 Open Primary where voters can vote for whomever they want. Party bosses are free to suggest that voters vote for certain candidates.