Willie Lee Wilson was a candidate for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination. In 2017 he sued the Democratic National Committee over his belief that the national party had injured his campaign. On June 22, U.S. District Court Judge Trevor McFadden allowed part of Wilson’s case to proceed, although the judge dismissed other parts.

The allegations for which evidence can now be presented are: (1) Even though Wilson was invited to a multi-candidate campaign rally in South Carolina, Democratic National Committee officials allowed Secret Service agents on Hillary Clinton’s detail to use the threat of force to keep Wilson off the stage; (2) the party refused to allow Wilson to enter into a contract to obtain the party’s voter registration files. Here is the 14-page ruling in Wilson v DNC Services Corporation, D.C., 1:17cv-730.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer has this news story about the Ohio Libertarian Party’s submitting 103,000 signatures to get back on the ballot.

According to various news stories, the three most likely nominees for the U.S. Supreme Court this month are three U.S. Court of Appeals judges, Brett Kavanaugh, Raymond Kethledge, and Amy Barrett.

Judge Kavanaugh had one case involving the Libertarian Party. In 2008 the District of Columbia accepted Libertarian presidential nominee Bob Barr’s declaration of write-in filing. Barr was not on the ballot, but he wanted his write-ins counted, so he filed the names of three eligible presidential elector candidates with the Board. He was the only declared write-in candidate for president in D.C. that year. Nevertheless, the D.C. Board of Elections refused to reveal how many write-ins he had received. Therefore, the election returns, compiled in various publications, all showed that Barr had received zero votes in D.C.

The party sued to force the Board to tally the write-ins, but the U.S. District Court, and the D.C. circuit, ruled against the party. Judge Kavanaugh was part of the panel in Libertarian Party v D.C. Board of Elections. At oral argument, he expressed support for the party’s position, but when the decision came out, he had sided with the other two judges. They ruled that the votes had been counted, because the D.C. Board of Elections revealed the total number of write-ins cast for president, including frivolous write-ins and write-ins for people who had not filed a write-in declaration of candidacy. This was an absurd conclusion. One might have said that if the Board had released no election returns for any candidate for president, except the total number of votes cast for president, that the Board had “counted” the votes.

Judge Raymond Kethledge of the Sixth Circuit wrote the 2016 decision in U.S. v NorCal Tea PartyPatriots, a case on whether the Internal Revenue Service was discriminating against Tea Party groups when they filed for tax-exempt status. It starts, “Among the most serious allegations a federal court can address are that an Executive agency has targeted citizens for mistreatment based on their political views. No citizen – Republican or Democrat, socialist or libertarian – should be targeted or even have to fear being targeted on those grounds.”

Judge Kethledge was also on the panel in Libertarian Party of Ohio v Husted, 11-4066, which made a favorable procedural ruling for the Libertarian Party on August 31, 2012. The U.S. District Court had earlier put the party on the ballot for the 2011 partisan elections, and the state had asked the Sixth Circuit to reverse that. The Sixth Circuit, in a per curiam decision, said the case at that point was moot, because the law the party was challenging had been suspended by a successful referendum petition.

Judge Amy Barrett of the Seventh Circuit has never had a case involving minor parties or independent candidates.