On September 27, U.S. District Court Judge Leigh Martin May dismissed Cowen v Raffensperger, n.d., 1:17cv-4660. This is the lawsuit filed in 2017 by the Georgia Libertarian Party against the 5% petition requirement for U.S. House candidates who are not nominees of a party that had polled 20% of the vote in the last election. The petition is so severe, no party has ever managed to complete it, even though it has existed for 80 years.

The Eleventh Circuit had upheld the law in 2022, but the Eleventh Circuit had seemed to leave an opening to attack the law on Equal Protection grounds. The case returned to U.S. District Court. But now Judge May has decided that the Eleventh Circuit had even foreclosed an Equal Protection argument. Here is her 13-page order.

The only justification for the law that the Eleventh Circuit had mentioned in its 2022 order was the “compelling interest” a state has to keep candidates off the ballot if they don’t have a “modicum of support.” The Eleventh Circuit did not elaborate on that point. If this argument were true, every state in the nation would have a “compelling” reason to ban all candidates from all ballots who weren’t capable of completing a petition signed by 5% of the registered voters in that jurisdiction. This is truly absurd. No candidate for any statewide race, or any U.S. House race, in the last fifty years in any state, has managed to complete a petition of 5% of the registered voters.

On September 26, officials of Austin, Texas, filed a notice of appeal to the Fifth Circuit in Virden v City of Austin, 23-50697. The U.S. District Court had struck down the city’s ban on a candidate accepting campaign contributions more than a year before the election.

On September 25, both sides in the lawsuit Libertarian National Committee v Saliba, e.d., 5:23cv-11074, filed a joint report with the U.S. District Court judge, expressing their opinions about the timing of the trial. The Libertarian National Committee wants it to start on April 1, 2024; the faction of the Michigan Libertarian Party that is not recognized by the national committee wants it to start October 1, 2024.

The LNC wants the substantive briefs to be due February 29, 2024, the other side wants them due August 15, 2024.

The trial is expected to last three days. Here is the joint report. The judge will now decide the schedule.

In the meantime, the Sixth Circuit has received the appeal of the faction of the Libertarian Michigan Party that is not recognized by the FEC. 23-1856. The issue in the Sixth Circuit is whether the U.S. District Court should have enjoined the non-LNC faction from calling itself “Libertarian Party of Michigan” while the lawsuit proceeds. The Sixth Circuit is sending that to mediation, which will be held on October 20.