On August 25, U.S. District Court Judge James M. Moody, Jr., upheld the March 3 petition deadline that was in effect in Arkansas in 2014 (and will be again in 2018, under current law), for non-presidential independent candidate petitions. He said the deadline is needed to give the state time to check the petitions. Of course, independent candidates go directly onto the November ballot, which is not printed until September. The decision is Moore v Martin, 4:14cv-65, eastern district. In 2014, the primary was in late May, which meant that independent candidates had to qualify more than two months before the major parties chose their nominees.
The decision says early deadlines are not unconstitutional unless they are combined with a high number of signatures. One of the plaintiffs in this case needed 10,000 signatures; the others, who were running for the legislature, needed a petition of 3% of the last gubernatorial vote cast in their districts.
This legal conclusion is obviously wrong. In Anderson v Celebrezze, the U.S. Supreme Court said Ohio’s March 20 petition deadline for independent presidential candidates was unconstitutional all by itself, regardless of the number of signatures. Anderson only needed 5,000 signatures in Ohio in 1980, which was only eight-hundredths of 1% of the number of registered voters in Ohio at the time (Ohio had 5,926,864 registered voters in 1980). Plaintiffs will probably ask for reconsideration, mentioning Anderson v Celebrezze. The opinion does not discuss that case.