Via How Appealing, comes link to this unanimous sixth Circuit opinion in Citizens for Tax Reform v. Deters. In holding that an Ohio law barring the payment to initiative circulators on anything other than a time-worked basis violates the First Amendment, the case puts the Sixth Circuit at odds with similar laws upheld against First Amendment challenge in the Second, Eighth, and Ninth Circuits. To be sure, the Sixth Circuit tries to distinguish these cases, but in my view either they are all unconstitutional as a violation of the First Amendment or none of them are.
I suspect that if my friend Bill Marshall (now Solicitor General of Ohio) petitions for cert., he’s likely to get the Court to hear the case. He may not win at the Court, but I think this is just the kind of election law case the Justices like to consider.