Ballot Access News: This week, three California minor parties filed a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the California top-two system. The parties are Peace & Freedom, Green, and Libertarian. Here is the 12-page Complaint in Peace & Freedom Party v Weber, n.d., 4:24cv-08308.

The case challenges the California system as an impediment to ballot access for minor parties, thereby sidestepping Washington State Grange v. Washington State Republican Party, 552 U.S. 442 (2008) and the decisions of lower courts upholding similar systems in Washington and Alaska:

“In its almost fourteen years of existence, the California top-two system has barred all minor party members from appearing on the general election ballot, except in races in which only one of the two major parties ran someone in that race. There is only one exception to that statement; in 2024 an American Independent Party candidate for Assembly qualified for the general election ballot, even though there had been candidates from both major parties in the race.”