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.

A U.S. District Court in Los Angeles has set various deadlines for Soltysik v Padilla, c.d. 2:15cv-7916. This is the case over California’s election law that lets some, but not all, candidates for Congress and partisan state office have party labels on the ballot. The plaintiff, a registered Socialist, was not permitted to have a label because the Socialist Party is not ballot-qualified in California.

Each side has a deadline in late summer 2020 for various filings, so the case can’t be decided in time for the 2020 primary, which is in March 2020.

On May 22, the New York legislature passed S5072. It provides that if the Chair of the U.S. House Ways & Means Committee asks New York state for a copy of the state income tax return of any New York taxpayer, then the state will comply with the request.

Governor Andrew Cuomo still hasn’t acted on the bill. New York legislative rules allow the Governor to wait until the end of the calendar year to act on any bill, so theoretically Cuomo could wait until December 31, 2019. Cuomo may not be very interested in the bill because the Chair of the U.S. House Ways & Means has said that even if the New York bill becomes law, the U.S. House would not request President Trump’s state income tax return from the state.