Stuckey v. Richardson

• Decision Date: 29 July 1988
• Docket Number: No. 77567,77567
• Citation: 188 Ga.App. 147,372 S.E.2d 458
• Parties: STUCKEY et al. v. RICHARDSON et al.
• Court: Georgia Court of Appeals

Page 458

372 S.E.2d 458

188 Ga.App. 147

STUCKEY et al. v. RICHARDSON et al.

No. 77567.

Court of Appeals of Georgia.

July 29, 1988.

Rehearing Denied Aug. 3, 1988.

Certiorari Denied Sept. 22, 1988.

Kent E. Mast, H. Quigg Fletcher, L. Catharine Cox, Oscar N. Persons, Frank B. Strickland, for appellants.

Celia Larsen, Wm. Washington Larsen, Jr., Garland T. Byrd, Charles W. Byrd, for appellees.

CARLEY, Judge.

The instant case concerns the selection of delegates from the State of Georgia to the 1988 National Republican Convention. Appellee-plaintiffs filed a petition for declaratory judgment, seeking a declaration that they were the validly selected delegates to the convention and that the delegates who had been selected by the appellant-defendant State Executive Committee of the Georgia Republican Party (Executive Committee) were not. Appellants answered, denying the material allegations of the petition. Appellants also moved to dismiss, asserting, among other grounds, that the dispute involved the conduct of the internal affairs of the appellant-defendant Georgia Republican Party and, as such, the dispute was not justiciable in the courts of this state.

The trial court denied appellants' motion to dismiss and, having heard the case sitting without a jury, it entered an order declaring appellees to be the validly selected delegates and the selection of delegates by the appellant Executive Committee to be invalid. Appellants filed a notice of appeal from this order and moved that this court expedite consideration and resolution of the case. We granted appellants' motion for expedition. "Because of the need to act quickly ..., we are deciding this case in an expedited manner even though this appeal was only recently filed and argued. This court's term will soon end. We do not normally decide cases during the last fifteen days of a term. OCGA § [s] 15-2-4[, 15-3-2]. However, ... under our inherent power, this court may establish whatever rules are necessary to determine the cases which come before us. [Cits.] The inherent power to make the rules includes the concomitant power to suspend the rules in an appropriate case such as the one

before us." Shore v. Shore, 253 Ga. 183, 184, 318 S.E.2d 57 (1984).

1. The motion to dismiss the appeal is denied.

2. Appellants enumerate the trial court's order as erroneous on the ground that "this dispute concerns the internal workings of a political party, specifically the selection of delegates to its state and national conventions, which is not justiciable by, and is beyond the jurisdiction of, the trial court...."

"Delegates [to a National Political Party Convention] perform a task of supreme importance to every citizen of the Nation regardless of their State of residence. The vital business of the Convention is the nomination of the Party's candidates for the offices of President and Vice President of the United States. To that end, the state political parties are 'affiliated with a national party through acceptance of the national call to send state delegates to the national convention.' [Cit.] The States themselves have no constitutionally mandated role in the great task of the selection of Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates. If the qualifications and eligibility of delegates to National Political Party Conventions were left to state law 'each of the fifty states could establish the qualifications of its delegates to the various party conventions without regard to party policy, an obviously intolerable result.' [Cit.] Such a regime could seriously undercut or indeed destroy the effectiveness of the National Party Convention as a concerted enterprise engaged in the vital process of choosing Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates--a process which usually involves coalitions cutting across state lines. The Convention serves the pervasive national interest in the selection of candidates for national office, and this national interest is greater than any interest of an individual State." Cousins v. Wigoda, 419 U.S. 477, 489-490 (II), 95 S.Ct. 541, 548-549, 42 L.Ed.2d 595 (1975). "It has been understood since our national political parties first came into being as voluntary associations of individuals that the convention itself is the proper forum for determining intra-party disputes as to which delegates shall be seated." O'Brien v. Brown, 409 U.S. 1, 4, 92 S.Ct. 2718, 2720, 34 L.Ed.2d 1 (1972). "[I]t is not for the courts to mediate the merits of this dispute.... [A] State, or a court, may not constitutionally substitute its own judgment for that of the Party. A political party's choice among the various ways of determining the makeup of a State's delegation to the party's national convention is protected by the Constitution. And as is true of all expressions of First Amendment freedoms, the courts may not interfere on the ground that they view a particular expression as unwise or irrational." Democratic Party of U.S. v. Wisconsin, 450 U.S. 107, 123-124 (III), 101 S.Ct. 1010, 1020, 67 L.Ed.2d 82 (1981). It follows that the instant dispute concerning the internal affairs of the Georgia Republican Party is a non-justiciable controversy which must be resolved by the 1988 National Republican Convention rather than by the courts of this state. Accordingly, the trial court erred in failing to grant appellants' motion to dismiss appellees' petition for declaratory judgment.

3. Appellants' remaining enumerations of error are moot by virtue of our holding in Division 2.

4. "We extend the [April] term relative to this case to enable the appellees to file a motion for [rehearing]. OCGA § [ § ] 15-2-4[, 15-3-2]." Haygood v. City of Doraville, 256 Ga. 566, 567, 350 S.E.2d 766 (1986).

JUDGMENT REVERSED.

BIRDSONG, C.J., McMURRAY, and BANKE, P.JJ., and SOGNIER, POPE and BEASLEY, JJ., concur.

DEEN, P.J., and BENHAM, J., concur in part and dissent in part.

DEEN, Presiding Judge, concurring in part and dissenting in part.

While concurring with Divisions 1 and 4 of the majority opinion, I must dissent from Divisions 2 and 3.

In this case, although the issue is in dispute, the appellees have compiled an impressive factual record containing thousands of pages of documents to support their contention that the upper-ranking leaders of the state Republican party, who supported a particular candidate, embarked upon a scheme or enterprise to systematically challenge the credentials of state convention delegations only from the counties in which a certain opposing candidate had prevailed in the primary election. That scheme, it was argued, was audacious in that the same alleged violations of elections rules occurred in many counties that voted for the candidate favored by the appellants, yet systematically no challenges were made to the returns from those counties.

The appellees obtained two injunctions against the appellants, the gist of which was that the appellants could not exclude the appellees from participating in the...