On June 14, the Arizona Libertarian Party asked the Ninth Circuit to rehear Arizona Libertarian Party v Hobbs, 17-16491. This is the case in which the original panel of the Ninth Circuit upheld the 2015 election law that requires Libertarians running in the Libertarian primary to submit thousands of signatures of party members in order to get themselves on the primary ballot. The law also allows independent voters to sign such petitions.

The law has had the effect of keeping all Libertarians off the primary ballot (and hence the general election ballot) for congress and partisan state office, ever since it was passed. Meanwhile, the law permits the Green Party to nominate with as few as one write-in vote in the Green primary.

The Ninth Circuit has notified attorneys in Merritt v Padilla, 18-55457, that it would like to hold oral argument in October 2019 if the attorneys find that month acceptable. This case arose when the California Secretary of State deleted a few words in Paul Merritt’s ballot pamphlet statement, when Merritt was running for U.S. Senate in 2016. Merritt, who paid to have his statement published in the state voter pamphlet, said he is an independent candidate. The Secretary of State deleted those words. In California, independent candidates (except presidential independents) cannot have “independent” as a ballot label. Instead they must have “party preference: none.”

Furthermore, the Secretary of State did not even inform Merritt that his words had been censored. Merritt only found out when his county registrar of voters told him. Yet the U.S. District Court ruled in 2017 that the Secretary of State did not violate the First Amendment, so then Merritt appealed to the Ninth Circuit.