On September 5, John Anthony Castro, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, filed a lawsuit in federal court in Maine, asking that the court determine whether or not former President Donald Trump is eligible under the 14th amendment. Castro already has a similar lawsuit pending in Florida. Here is the Complaint. Castro v Fellows, :23cv-335. Thanks to Shawn L. for this news.
On September 5, the California Senate passed AB 1227. It lets Santa Clara County, the most populous county in northern California, use ranked choice voting for elections for its own officers. However, the bill is still not through the legislature, because the versions passed by the Assembly and State Senate are not identical. The bill will go to a conference committee.
On September 5, the California legislature passed AB 421, a bill that would have made it more difficult for referenda and initiatives to get on the ballot. But those provisions were taken out of the bill before it passed. Now the bill simplifies the ballot when a referendum is on the ballot. A referendum is a petition to stop a new bill that the legislature had recently passed. California has had the referendum since 1911. Referenda on California ballots have long been confusing, because there would inevitably be puzzlement about whether a “yes” vote means, “Repeal that new law”, or “Keep that new law.”
The bill provides that when a referendum is on the ballot, the ballot will ask the voters, “Overturn the law” or “Keep the law.”
AB 421 originally outlawed paying circulators on a per-signature basis. It also said that 5% of the signatures had to be from unpaid circulators. Those provisions were removed from the bill, probably because Governor Gavin Newsom had told the legislature that if they remained in the bill, he would veto the bill. He had previously vetoed such bills. So had his two precedessors, Governors Jerry Brown and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
As passed, AB 421 also gives the sponsors of a referendum more flexibility to remove their measure from the ballot, should the legislature react to the referedum petition by repealing part of the law the referendum sponsors didn’t like. And it adds a law that information about the two top financial backers of the referendum should be mentioned in the Voter’s Guide that is mailed to all California voters.
This news story says 419 North Carolina voters have already registered as members of the No Labels Party, and says that two-thirds of them are voters who had not previously been registered, or at least were not registered in North Carolina. The story then suggests that perhaps persons who wish to be registered independents are choosing “No Labels”, even though “unaffiliated” (the North Carolina government’s term for independent voters) is also listed as a choice on the voter registration form.
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear Vidal v Elster, 22-704, on November 1, Wednesday. The issue is the federal trademark law, the Lanham Act, and whether an individual should be permitted to trademark the political slogan “Trump Too Small” for use on T-shirts he sells. The Lanham Act does not permit trademarks that mention a living person without his or her permission. But the Federal Circuit had struck down that law on First Amendment grounds.
Public Citizen has filed this amicus curiae brief, which argues that the Supreme Court should rule that trademark law cannot be used to trademark political slogans. If a trademark is granted for political slogans, that restricts the ability of non-trademark holders to voice such political slogans.
If the Court writes an opinion on that point, there might be an impact on the Libertarian National Committee’s attempts to use trademark law to adjudicate intra-party disputes.
The upcoming U.S. Supreme Court opinion might also influence the outcome of Mazo v Way, the New Jersey lawsuit against the state law restricting ballot slogans on primary ballots. The New Jersey law does not allow a slogan that mentions a living individual with that individual’s permission.
