On May 7, an Arizona state trial court declined to hear the case Kemp v Arizona Republican Party, Maricopa County, cv2021-5107. Here is the four-page opinion. The judge said the case is non-justiciable because it involves a dispute over the outcome of an election for party office.
The New York Libertarian Party has issued this press release, concerning the denial of injunctive relief against the 2020 New York ballot access changes.
On May 4, Kevin W. Goering died unexpectedly at the age of 64. He was the attorney for the Working Families Party in the ballot access cases that challenge the new definition of “political party”, and the new number of signatures for statewide candidates of 45,000. The Working Families, SAM, Libertarian and Green Parties are all suing over those 2020 laws.
Due to Mr. Goering’s death, the Working Families Party case is on pause for 90 days, and the other two cases are paused for at least 30 days. Goering had been hospitalized late in April 2021. He was a specialist in First Amendment cases.
On May 14, the Missouri legislature adjourned, and none of the bills to make it more difficult to get an initiative on the statewide ballot, or to make it more difficult for them to pass, was enacted. However it is possible a special session will be called. Thanks to Ken Bush for this news.
On May 14, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the statewide initiative process can’t be used any longer, unless or until the legislature passes a bill reinstating it. The initiative process is in the State Constitution. Here is the decision in Butler v Watson, 2020-IA-01199.
The decision is 28 pages and the dissents are somewhat longer.
Ever since 1992, the Mississippi Constitution has provided for the initiative but has said that no more than one-fifth of the signatures can come from a single U.S. House district. Back in 1992, there were five districts, but after the 2000 census, Mississippi went from five to four districts. The election code still has the boundaries for the five districts that were passed in 1991. The current boundaries, for only four districts, were drawn by a U.S. District Court because the legislature never bothered to draw new boundaries. Until now, the state has recognized initiative petitions if they followed the statutory boundaries of the old five districts, and several initiatives won at the ballot box even though they had submitted petitions based on the five-district plan. Those initiatives have not been invalidated.
But, the new decision says that the medical marijuana initiative passed in November 2020 is invalid, because its petition was invalid, because it was based on the “shadow” five-district map. The majority decision says that the problem could be fixed if the legislature passed a law saying for purposes of the initiative process, the five-district boundaries should be used.
