On June 19, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a federal law that says the Patent and Trademark Office must not approve any trademark that may “disparage…or bring…into contempt or disrepute” any “persons, living or dead.” The decision, Matal v Tam, 15-1293, is unanimous.

The basis for the decision is the free speech portion of the First Amendment. The government had tried to defend the law by saying that when the government grants a trademark, that is really government speech. The Court rejected that argument.

The government also tried to defend the law by saying government can restrict speech if the government is creating a valuable platform for the person or group which applies for the trademark. The Court rejected that argument as well.

The government argued that the law treated everyone alike, because no one is permitted to register certain types of names, but that argument was also rejected.

The logic of this decision would seem to apply to Voter Handbooks, which are created by state governments in some states and mailed to every registered voter. These Handbooks typically let parties or candidates publicize their message. Sometimes governments try to restrict what the party or candidate says. For example, in 2016, the California Secretary of State refused to let one candidate for U.S. Senate, Paul Merritt, say that he is a registered independent. Also the California law does not permit any candidate to mention his or her opponent.

Merritt is currently suing over the censorship of his 2016 statement in the California voters handbook. The case is still in U.S. District Court.

Maine LD 1571 makes moderate improvements in ballot access for newly-qualifying parties. It says that the deadline for a group to obtain 5,000 registered members is January of the election year, rather than December of the year before the election.

More importantly, it says that a newly-qualifying party has two elections before it must meet the requirements for a party to remain on. The standard for a party to remain on is that it have 10,000 registered members who actually cast a ballot in a general election.

Finally, the bill clarifies that the Libertarian Party is a qualified party for 2018. But in November 2018, if the law remains unchanged, the Libertarian Party must have more than 10,000 registered voters, because it must have 10,000 registered members who cast a ballot in November 2018.

The new law is still subject to court challenge. The deadline of January of an election year is still preposterously early. Also the law on how a party remains on the ballot is not sensible. If a party has enough support to be recognized in its first year if it has 5,000 registrants, why should it have more than 10,000 to remain on, several years later? If Maine would let a party keep its registrants when it goes off the ballot, a party that went off the ballot for not having 10,000 registrants could instantly come back into legal existence, because it would have had at least 5,000, so it could instantly again be qualified. The problem with that is that when a new party ceases to be qualified in Maine, election officials convert all its members instantly to independents, a policy that itself is probably unconstitutional. Courts in Colorado, New York, New Jersey, and Oklahoma have ruled that states must let voters register into unqualified parties as well as qualified ones.

On June 22, California Republican Assemblymember Travis Allen announced that he will run for Governor in 2018. Another Republican, John Cox, had already announced for Governor. See this story. The Allen candidacy increases the odds that the June 2018 primary will cause only two Democrats to qualify for the November ballot. Allen represents the Huntington Beach area of Orange County.