With the Supreme Court having issued its decision in Clingman v. Beaver, I thought it would be useful to list election law cases I’m watching for eventual resolution by the Supreme Court:
Landell v. Sorell This is the Second Circuit case that strongly suggests candidate expenditure limits may be consistitutional, despite the Supreme Court’s ruling in Buckley v. Valeo. Plaintiffs recently filed a cert. petition. My earlier coverage is here.
Wisconsin Right to Life This is the “as-applied” challenge to the corporate expenditure limits in BCRA. This case is on appeal to the Supreme Court, so the Court eventually will have to rule, either summarily or by setting the case for argument. I predict a summary affirmance, with some dissents. My earlier coverage is here.
The Florida felon disenfranchisement case There is a split between the circuits over whether a ban on felon disenfranchisement violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act given a racially discriminatory effect. I had wrongly predicted the Supreme Court would take either the case from the Second or Ninth Circuits. Now the Eleventh Circuit has sided with the second in Johnson v. Bush in holding there is no VRA violation. You can find my earlier coverage of on the Florida case here. I don’t believe a petition for cert has been filed yet.
The Texas Re-redistricting cases A three judge court in Texas heard arguments in the Texas re-redistricting case on January 21. The delay likely means there will be more than one opinion. This case will eventually be appealed to the Supreme Court, where we might then learn whether there will be a standard that a Court majority will embrace to judge when partisan gerrymandering is unconstitutional. How might that happen? Justice Kennedy might make up his mind, or one of the members of the plurality (Rehnquist, O’Connor, Scalia, and Thomas) could retire, to be replaced by a Justice who would take a different position on these issues. My earlier coverage is here.
Any other cases we in the election law field should watch closely? I have enabled comments.