On April 21, the Texas House Elections Committee passed HB 1987, which is authored by Representative Cody Vasut (R-Angleton). It says that a party chair cannot be a candidate for elective office, or an office-holder. The vote was 5-4.

The bill would be unconstitutional under Eu v San Francisco County Central Committee, 489 US 214 (1989). That unanimous decision strikes down California laws on who can be a state party chairperson, under Freedom of Association. Furthermore, as to congressional candidates, the bill would violate the U.S. Supreme Court decision U.S. Term Limits v Thornton, which says states can’t add to the qualifications for congressional candidates. Thanks to Jim Riley for the news about the bill.

On April 22, the U.S. House passed HR 51, the bill to make almost all of the District of Columbia a state. The vote was completely party-line.

On April 20, a U.S. District Court issued an opinion in Arsenault v Way, 3:16cv-1854, striking down the New Jersey residence requirement for petitioners who wish to circulate petitions for candidates running in primaries. Here is the 21-page decision. The case had been filed in 2016 when Rocky De La Fuente was running in Democratic presidential primaries. He needed 1,000 signatures of registered Democrats in order to get on the New Jersey Democratic presidential primary. He did not get on that ballot; the only candidates who appeared on that ballot were Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

Originally the U.S. District Court had upheld the restriction, but then the Third Circuit had remanded it and said the lower court should have used the strict scrutiny test. Under that test, the law cannot survive unless the state can show that it has a compelling need for the restriction. The state tried to argue that the Democratic and Republican Parties would be harmed without the restriction, but the two major parties themselves never intervened in the case and the state produced no evidence that the parties would be harmed.