On April 27, Butch Ware, the Green Party candidate for Governor of California, filed a federal lawsuit against the California law that requires gubernatorial candidates to furnish the last five years of their income tax returns. The Complaint also charges that the law was enforced in a discriminatory manner this year. Ware v Weber, e.d., 2:26cv-1643. The case is assigned to U.S. District Court Magistrate Sean C. Riordan. Here is the Complaint.
UPDATE: the Magisrate has asked that the case be assigned to a U.S. District Court Judge, and it has been reassigned to U.S. District Court Judge William B. Shubb, a Bush Sr. appointee.
Good for butchware. It’s a stupid, unconstitutional, nosy, discriminatory law, passed for stupid reasons. Tax disclosure should always be voluntary.
I’m usually a stickler for the feds staying out of state and local business. But I’m pretty sure this legislation was really all about Trump, but more importantly and even if I’m wrong, state and federal taxes are interlinked, and no state has any right to require that disclosure to public information.
entire life history to be made public via ballot access laws ???
Stay in your lane, AZ SPAMBOT.
This is an odd way of framing the situation. He submitted the forms and was disqualified because the secretary’s office claimed her didn’t redact information on one of the return forms, but that’s a rule they don’t usually enforce. It became that much worse when the office was forced to admit that they did in fact have the corrected forms, but had already removed his name from the ballot. It was shady through and through, but he’s registered as a write-in as well so his supporters are still going to put his name down.
Having filed the forms doesn’t preclude suing against the requirement.
I was so angry at the chicanery of the Secretary of State’s office that I re-registered from Democrat to Green. To get all the details of how they engineered his removal from the ballot, listen to Ware’s interviews with Nathan J. Robinson on his Current Affairs channel or the longer one on Katie Halper’s channel which she just took off the pay-wall.
I’m a far right Republican, but I agree he got screwed.