On October 29, Richard Whitney, Green Party nominee for Illinois Governor, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Chicago against WTTW, one of Chicago’s Public TV Stations, for sponsoring a debate and inviting only the Democratic and Republican nominees for Governor. The case is Whitney v Window to the World Communications, 2010-cv-7003.
In 1998, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Arkansas Educational TV Commission v Forbes that public television stations may not host debates and then exclude candidates who have a real campaign. The Court said candidates whose campaigns have generated appreciable public interest cannot be excluded. In the Forbes case, the Court ruled against the plaintiff-candidate, an independent congressional candidate in Arkansas, because he had raised almost no money, had no campaign headquarters outside his home, and few voters appeared interested in him. None of those things are true for Whitney’s campaign.