The Ninth Circuit has issued a briefing schedule in De La Fuente v Padilla, 17-56668. This is the case that challenges the California independent presidential petition requirement, which is 2020 will probably be approximately 200,000 valid signatures. Every other state has some means for a presidential candidate running outside the major parties to get on the ballot with support from fewer than 50,000 people. Yet the U.S. District Court had upheld the law last year. No one has successfully completed the California independent presidential petition since 1992. The U.S. District Court upheld the law partly because it felt that the alternate means to get a new party on the ballot are easy enough. But that was a mistake for two reasons. First, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Storer v Brown in 1974 that the independent candidate and political party approaches are entirely different, and states must have adequate procedures for both. Furthermore, the California procedure for a new party is also very difficult. No group has successfully qualified with a registration drive since 1995.

On February 7, the Illinois Green Party filed this cert petition in its ballot access case, Tripp v Scholz. The case concerns the ballot access procedures for state legislature, for unqualified party candidates and independent candidates. The lower courts had upheld the requirements, even though in 2016 not a single minor party for the legislature was able to get on the Illinois ballot. The only other states with no minor party legislative candidates on the ballot in 2016 were Georgia, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Tennessee.