On August 13, a U.S. District Court Judge in Kansas struck down the law requiring circulators to be residents of Kansas. Constitution Party of Kansas v Biggs, 10-4043. This outcome was no surprise, because on July 23, the Attorney General and the attorney for the Constitution Party had filed a joint brief, arguing that the law is unconstitutional.
Kansas is in the 10th circuit, and the 10th circuit had ruled in 2008 that residency requirements for circulators are unconstitutional. See this story about the lawsuit. The list of states (in the newspaper story) that ban out-of-state circulators is not accurate. In some of the states on the list, the ban on out-of-state circulators has already been struck down.
The other half of the lawsuit is not settled yet. It concerns the state’s ban on voters registering into a party that is not ballot-qualified. The case law in the 10th circuit on that issue is also good, but Kansas is not willing to concede that point. The Constitution Party is not ballot-qualified but some Kansas voters would like to register as members of the party. Similar lawsuits have won in New Jersey, New York, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Colorado. However, relief in some of these cases has been limited to unqualified parties that do place their nominees on the November ballot. In Kansas, the Constitution Party has twice placed its presidential nominee on the ballot even while it was not a qualified party.