On January 28, the Brennan Center, which was formed by former law clerks to U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan to advance his goals, filed an amicus curiae brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in Carney v Adams, 19-309. The Brennan Center brief is in support of the Delaware law that does not permit anyone to be appointed to most state courts in the state, unless they are members of a party that has registration of at least 5% of the total registration.

The case was filed by an independent attorney who would like to be appointed to a judicial office. It is supremely ironic that the Brennan Center has sided against the independent applicant, because Justice Brennan authored Elrod v Burns in 1976, striking down the patronage system for most government hiring decisions.

On January 27, the Wisconsin Election Commission ruled that Brent Fennessey, a Superior, Wisconsin city council member, should be on the ballot in the upcoming April 2020 election. In Wisconsin, candidates for local office are supposed to certify their petitions before they start to circulate them. Fennessey accidentally showed on his paperwork that he had not certified his petitions until after he had circulated them. So, someone challenged his ballot position at 4:25 pm on the deadline date.

Even though the city clerk’s office closes at 4:30 pm, the city clerk’s office allowed Fennessey into the office at 4:59 pm so he could correct the error. The challenger then complained to the Wisconsin Election Commission that he should not have been allowed to do that. But the Commission sided with the candidate. See this story.

On January 30, the U.S. Supreme Court asked Arizona to respond to the cert petition filed by the Arizona Libertarian Party. This is the case over the state’s severe requirements for a members of a small ballot-qualified party to get on their own party’s primary ballot. The Arizona law is especially senseless and discriminatory, because it only applies to parties that have been ballot-qualified for more than four years. That is why, in 2016 and 2018, the Green Party (which had not been continuously ballot-qualified before 2016) was able to easily nominate candidates, whereas the Libertarian Party, which has more voter support as shown by voter registration records, could not.

The law let Greens win a Green Party nomination with just a single write-in vote in the Green Party’s primary in both 2016 and 2018, but required Libertarian write-in candidates to win thousands of write-ins, if they were running for statewide office.

This is the first time the U.S. Supreme Court has asked the state for a response, in a ballot access case involving independent or minor party candidates, since 2011, when the Court asked Hawaii to respond to Nader v Nago. When the Court asks for a state response, that shows it is somewhat interested in the case. In the case of Nader v Nago, though, ultimately the Court did not hear the case.

The state response is due March 2. That means that organizations that wish to file an amicus curiae brief also have until March 2 to file something.