Supreme Court Permits NCICL Attorneys To Participate In Ballot Access Case

NCICL Executive Director Bob Orr and Senior Staff Attorney Jason Kay were permitted to file a brief as amicus curiae before the North Carolina Supreme Court in Libertarian Party of NC v. State.  The case addresses the burdens placed on emerging political parties and their constitutional rights to participate in the election process.  NCICL will urge the Court to protect the integrity of the North Carolina Constitution and not permit constitutionally inequitable treatment of rising political parties.

North Carolina has one of the most restrictive ballot access laws in the nation.  The State presently requires more than 69,000 signatures for a new political party to be listed on the ballot.  It used to require only 10,000.  The Court of Appeals held in a split decision that the State's ballot access prohibitions burdened fundamental constitutional rights of free speech, freedom of association, and equal application of the laws, but did not violate the North Carolina Constitution.  Two members of the Court of Appeals panel found that the State was entitled to a presumption that it had not violated the Constitution and that it had met the high legal threshold known as "strict scrutiny."  The other member of the panel held that the State had violated the Constitution.

NCICL has asserted that the lower court erred in two critical ways.  First, the State is not entitled to any measure of deference when its statutes burden the fundamental constitutional rights of North Carolina citizens.  Second, although the Court of Appeals correctly held that strict scrutiny must be applied to North Carolina's ballot access restrictions, the court incorrectly held that the State had proved that its most recent method of restricting ballot access was narrowly tailored to advance only its alleged compelling governmental interest.

Kay said, "this case is about something larger than the parties involved in this litigation, its about the integrity of the Constitution itself.  When the State infringes on the fundamental constitutional rights of its citizens, it is not entitled to a measure of deference.  In this instance, the rights enshrined in the North Carolina Constitution cannot be placed in a role that is subordinate to the will of the legislature.  And when the State has burdened the same constitutional rights in the past through means that are less burdensome than those employed in the present, it is hard to understand how those restrictions have been crafted by the legislature in the most narrowly tailored way, as the Constitution requires.  We look forward to raising these concerns before the Supreme Court."