On May 11, the Sixth Circuit issued an opinion in Green Party of Tennessee v Hargett, 16-6299. The opinion is only nine pages and is entirely about procedure concerning presentation of evidence. It says that the U.S. District Court decision of 2016, upholding the Tennessee 2.5% petition for newly-qualifying parties, contained no errors, and therefore it stands. The Sixth Circuit opinion is completely devoid of any discussion of the law itself. It merely presumes that the law is valid, and says the U.S. District Court was correct to exclude most of the plaintiffs’ evidence.
Except for the American Party founded by George Wallace in Tennessee in 1968, no group has ever successfully petitioned for party status in Tennessee. Before 1961 any party could get on the ballot in Tennessee simply by request, yet Tennessee never had more than six parties on the ballot. Tennessee clearly doesn’t need a petition of 33,816 valid signatures, for new parties, to keep its ballot uncrowded, because it lets independent candidates on the ballot with only 25 signatures (275 for president). Not a word of any of these facts or points appears anywhere in the Sixth Circuit decision. The decision’s author is not identified. The three judges, who did not permit any oral argument in this case, are R. Guy Cole, Ronald Lee Gilman (Clinton appointees), and Ralph B. Guy (a Reagan appointee).
Because the decision does not discuss the merits of the case, a party that had not previously brought a lawsuit against Tennessee’s party petition would be free to file a new lawsuit and present all the evidence that had been excluded in this case. The plaintiffs in this case were the Green and Constitution Parties.
