On August 31, both sides in the Texas ballot access case filed briefs in support of Summary Judgment. If the judge rejects both of them, there will be a trial. First, though, each side may file one rebuttal brief. The case challenges all the ballot access restrictions that affect independent candidates and the nominees of parties other than the Republican and Democratic Parties. Some of those restrictions hamper the two minor parties that are ballot-qualified, the Libertarian and Green Parties. But most of the challenged laws affect parties that are not now on the ballot but which would like to be, such as the plaintiff Constitution Party.

Here is the brief of Plaintiffs.

Here is the brief of the state.

On August 17, Jenna Amacher, an Alderman in Tullahoma, Tennessee, filed a federal lawsuit to force the city to print “Republican” next to her name in the next election for Alderman. Amacher v State of Tennessee, m.d., 3:21cv-638. Tennessee law says that unless a city specifies in its charter that it has partisan elections, all city elections will be non-partisan. Here is the Complaint. She is a Republican. On page two, the Complaint says that she “seeks the right to affiliate with her political organization on the voter ballot.”

The Complaint implies that state law prevents the Republican Party from endorsing her, but there is nothing in any state law mentioned in the Complaint that stops a political party from endorsing a candidate in a non-partisan election. The Complaint does not mention the U.S. Supreme Court decision Timmons v Twin Cities Area New Party, which upheld Minnesota’s ban on fusion and which said there is no constitutional right for candidates to have a party label on ballots. Thanks to the Institute for Free Speech for the news of this case.