The U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether to hear Carney v Adams, 19-309, on Friday, November 8. This is the case in which the Third Circuit struck down a Delaware law that says on most state courts, all judges must be members of parties that have at least 5% of the registration. Effectively this means they must all be Republicans or Democrats. No other party in Delaware history has had 5% of the registration.

All state court judges in Delaware are appointed. There are no judicial elections.

The U.S. Supreme Court won’t release news about the November 8 conference until November 12, at the earliest.

On October 25, the opponents of the California legislature’s size filed this brief in the Ninth Circuit. The case is Citizens for Fair Representation v Padilla, 18-17458. The case concerns the population of legislative districts, approximately 1,000,000 per State Senate district, and 500,000 per Assembly district. The people who filed this case argue that ordinary citizens don’t have an effective voice in state government because of the huge districts.

The main thrust of the brief is that the U.S. District Court should not have dismissed the case, because this type of case calls for a 3-judge U.S. District Court.

A U.S. District Court in North Carolina will hear arguments in Kopitke v Bell on Thursday, November 7, at 2 p.m. This is the case that challenges various ballot access laws relating to independent candidates, including a challenge to the early March petition deadline for independent candidate petitions. The case is e.d., 7:19cv-164. The March petition deadline, as applied to independent presidential candidates, is obviously unconstitutional under Anderson v Celebrezze, which in 1983 struck down Ohio’s March 20 petition deadline for independent presidential candidates. The North Carolina deadline is March 3, easily the earliest in the nation. The next-earliest is the Texas May deadline, which is also under court attack.

Until 2017, the North Carolina independent petition deadline was in mid-May. The 2017 session of the legislature moved it to early March.