Dixon v. Maryland State Administrative Bd. of Election Laws, 88-1735

• Citation: 878 F.2d 776
• Decision Date: 28 June 1989
• Docket Number: No. 88-1735,88-1735
• Parties: Reba Williams DIXON; Dana Burroughs; Edwin B. Fruit; Margaret Mary Kreiner, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. MARYLAND STATE ADMINISTRATIVE BOARD OF ELECTION LAWS; James W. Johnson, Jr., Margarette E. Crowder, Solomon N. Hoke, Barbara B. Kendall, Peggy Rae Pavlat, as members of the Board; Gene M. Raynor, as the State Administrator of Election Laws; Baltimore City Board of Supervisors of Elections; Carl M. Adair, Marvin L. Cheatham, Eugene Cone, as members of the Board, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (4th Circuit)

Page 776

878 F.2d 776

58 USLW 2035

Reba Williams DIXON; Dana Burroughs; Edwin B. Fruit;

Margaret Mary Kreiner, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. MARYLAND STATE ADMINISTRATIVE BOARD OF ELECTION LAWS; James

W. Johnson, Jr., Margarette E. Crowder, Solomon N. Hoke,

Barbara B. Kendall, Peggy Rae Pavlat, as members of the

Board; Gene M. Raynor, as the State Administrator of

Election Laws; Baltimore City Board of Supervisors of

Elections; Carl M. Adair, Marvin L. Cheatham, Eugene Cone,

as members of the Board, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 88-1735.

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued Jan. 11, 1989.

Decided June 28, 1989.

Frank Montgomery Dunbaugh, Washington, D.C. (Susan Goering, Legal Director, Baltimore, Md., ACLU of Maryland, on brief), for plaintiffs-appellants.

Jack Schwartz, Asst. Atty. Gen. (J. Joseph Curran, Jr., Atty. Gen., Baltimore, Md., on brief), for defendants-appellees.

Before WINTER, HALL and PHILLIPS, Circuit Judges.

HARRISON L. WINTER, Circuit Judge:

In this case plaintiffs--candidates for office and voters in a Baltimore City election--challenge provisions of Maryland's general election laws. The challenged laws require that non-indigent write-in candidates for certain Baltimore City offices file certificates of candidacy and pay a filing fee of $150 in order to become "official" candidates and to have the votes cast for them reported publicly. The principal question raised is whether these restrictions impermissibly infringe on rights protected by the first and fourteenth amendments to the United States Constitution. We hold that they do.

I.

Under Maryland law, non-indigent write-in candidates for city, state, or national office must file certificates of candidacy and pay the same filing fees as candidates whose names appear on the ballot in order to be declared "official" candidates and to have the votes cast for them reported publicly. ¹ The fee for each city-wide Baltimore City office is $150. ² Filing fees are "mandatory unless the candidate establishes his inability to pay the fee." ³ The fees for Baltimore City offices are paid to the Board of Supervisors of Elections for Baltimore City ("Board"), which in turn pays the monies received to the Mayor and City of Baltimore. ⁴

Plaintiffs Reba Williams Dixon and Dana Burroughs campaigned for, respectively, the city-wide offices of Mayor of Baltimore and President of the Baltimore City Council in the 1987 Baltimore City election. Dixon and Burroughs, along with plaintiffs Edwin B. Fruit and Margaret Mary Kreiner, who cast votes for Dixon and Burroughs, reside and are registered to vote in Baltimore City. All four plaintiffs are affiliated with the Socialist Workers Party.

On July 27, 1987, Dixon and Burroughs attempted to file certificates of candidacy for the offices they sought. When they refused either to pay the required filing fees or to submit the official form "Petition to File as an Indigent Candidate," the Board rejected their certificates. ⁵ The next day, they filed this suit pursuant to 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983, seeking to enjoin both the imposition of filing fees on write-in candidates and Maryland's refusal to report their votes, on the grounds that these actions violated the first and fourteenth amendments to the United States Constitution.

The district court addressed only the question of whether the statutes constituted a violation of the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment. See Dixon v. Maryland State Admin. Bd. of Election Laws, 686 F.Supp. 539 (D.Md.1988). The court began its inquiry by attempting to determine which level of equal protection scrutiny--rational basis or strict scrutiny--to apply in analyzing the claims of unconstitutionality. See id. at 541. Declaring that, in comparison with the amounts of the filing fees for ballot access invalidated by the United States Supreme Court in Bullock v. Carter, 405 U.S. 134, 92 S.Ct. 849, 31 L.Ed.2d 92 (1972) (invalidating mandatory ballot access fees of over $1000), and Lubin v. Panish, 415 U.S. 709, 94 S.Ct. 1315, 39 L.Ed.2d 702 (1974) (invalidating a mandatory ballot access fee of over $700), the $150 write-in filing fee at issue was not "a significant obstacle to a candidate's eligibility to run or to the voters' ability to vote for him," the district court ruled that the requirement would be valid if supported by some rational basis. Dixon, 686 F.Supp. at 541. Upon examining the two interests asserted by the State--defraying the cost of write-in candidacies and discouraging frivolous or fraudulent candidacies--the district court concluded that the latter interest, at least, provided such a basis. See id. at 541-542. The district court did not analyze plaintiffs' claims under the first amendment.

The district court denied plaintiffs' application for interim relief and subsequently granted defendants' motion for summary judgment. Accordingly, Dixon and Burroughs were not made certified and official candidates, and the write-in votes cast by and for them were not officially reported.

II.

Any write-in candidate who fails to pay Maryland's required filing fee and become certified will neither be considered an official candidate nor have reported the write-in votes cast for him. Thus, the direct impact of the fee and certification requirements falls on the candidate. It falls equally, however, on the voters who support him, because it is through their association with and their votes for the candidate that they may most effectively express their political preference. The district court concerned itself almost exclusively with the impact of the requirements on the candidate. We consider and decide the case on the basis of the effect of the regulations on the voters of Baltimore City.

If this case is examined from the standpoint of the impact of the restrictions on one who seeks to be a candidate, it is true that the Supreme Court has suggested that the right to be a candidate for public office may not be a fundamental right in and of itself and may be subject to some degree of regulation. See Bullock, 405 U.S. at 142-143, 92 S.Ct. at 855-856; Developments in the Law--Elections, 88 Harv.L.Rev. 1111, 1218 & n. 8 (1975). The Court has acknowledged, however, that "the rights of voters and the rights of candidates do not lend themselves to neat separation." Bullock, 405 U.S. at 143, 92 S.Ct. at 856. As the Court has noted, "laws that affect candidates always have at least some theoretical, correlative effect on voters." Id. Indeed, as the Court has stated emphatically, "[t]he impact of candidate eligibility requirements on voters implicates basic constitutional rights." Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U.S. 780, 786, 103 S.Ct. 1564, 1568, 75 L.Ed.2d 547 (1983) (footnote omitted).

In this connection, the Court has identified as of particular concern those laws directed at aspirants for office that tend "to limit the field of candidates from which voters might choose." Bullock, 405 U.S. at 143, 92 S.Ct. at 856; see Anderson, 460 U.S. at 786, 103 S.Ct. at 1568. The Court considers such laws suspect because they may impose restrictions on the fundamental right to vote. See Lubin, 415 U.S. at 716, 94 S.Ct. at 1320; Williams v. Rhodes, 393 U.S. 23, 31, 89 S.Ct. 5, 10, 21 L.Ed.2d 24 (1968). Moreover, "[t]he exclusion of candidates ... burdens voters' freedom of association, because ... a candidate serves as a rallying point for like-minded citizens." Anderson, 460 U.S. at 787-788, 103 S.Ct. at 1569-1570 (footnote omitted). Accordingly, the Court has emphasized that, "[i]n approaching candidate restrictions, it is essential to examine in a realistic light the extent and nature of their impact on voters." Bullock, 405 U.S. at 143, 92 S.Ct. at 856.

At the same time, however, it is important to recognize that "not all restrictions imposed by the States on candidates' eligibility ... impose constitutionally suspect burdens on voters' rights to associate or to choose among candidates." Anderson, 460 U.S. at 788, 103 S.Ct. at 1569. The Supreme Court has repeatedly stressed the legitimate interest of the States in keeping elections fair, honest, and orderly. See, e.g., id.; Storer v. Brown, 415 U.S. 724, 730, 94 S.Ct. 1274, 1279, 39 L.Ed.2d 714 (1974); Bullock, 405 U.S. at 144-145, 92 S.Ct. at 856-857. As the Court has expressly noted, a "State's important regulatory interests are generally sufficient to justify reasonable, nondiscriminatory restrictions." Anderson, 460 U.S. at 788, 103 S.Ct. at 1569 (footnote omitted).

As did the district court, we next consider the standard of review by which we are to adjudge the validity of the challenged laws. In numerous cases, the Supreme Court has endeavored to determine whether statutory restrictions on candidates are invalid under the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment. See, e.g., Clements v. Fashing, 457 U.S. 957, 962-965, 102 S.Ct. 2836, 2843-2844, 73 L.Ed.2d 508 (1982) (collecting cases). ⁶ The Supreme Court has also scrutinized candidate restrictions directly under the first and fourteenth amendments without conducting separate analyses under the equal protection clause of the latter amendment. See Anderson, supra; accord Tashjian v. Republican Party of Connecticut, 479 U.S. 208, 107 S.Ct. 544, 93 L.Ed.2d 514 (1986).

In Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U.S. 780, 103 S.Ct. 1564, 75 L.Ed.2d 547 (1983), for

example, the Court held that an Ohio candidacy statement filing deadline unconstitutionally infringed on rights of voters protected under the first amendment as applied to the States via the fourteenth amendment. In so ruling, the Court articulated the following analysis for use in gauging the constitutionality of restrictions on candidacy:

Constitutional challenges to specific provisions of a State's election laws ... cannot be resolved by any "litmus-paper test" that will separate valid from invalid restrictions.... Instead, a court must resolve such a challenge by an analytical process that parallels...