Twin Cities Area New Party v. McKenna

• Citation: 863 F. Supp. 988
• Decision Date: 16 September 1994
• Docket Number: Civ. No. 3-94-953.
• Parties: TWIN CITIES AREA NEW PARTY, Plaintiff, v. Lou McKENNA, Director, Ramsey County Department of Property Records and Revenue; Joan Anderson Growe, Secretary of the State of Minnesota, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Minnesota

863 F. Supp. 988

TWIN CITIES AREA NEW PARTY, Plaintiff, v. Lou McKENNA, Director, Ramsey County Department of Property Records and Revenue; Joan Anderson Growe, Secretary of the State of Minnesota, Defendants.

Civ. No. 3-94-953.

United States District Court, D. Minnesota, Third Division.

September 16, 1994.

Public Interest Project of Hamline Law School and Kenneth E. Tilsen, St. Paul, MN, Public Citizen Litigation Group and Cornish F. Hitchcock, Washington, DC, and Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland and Sarah E. Siskind, Madison, WI, appeared for and on behalf of plaintiff.

Office of the Ramsey County Atty. and Kristine Legler Kaplan and Office of the Minnesota Atty. Gen., St. Paul, MN and Peter M. Ackerberg, Minneapolis, MN, appeared for and on behalf of defendants.

AMENDED ORDER AND MEMORANDUM

DAVIS, District Judge.

This matter came on for hearing before the Honorable Michael J. Davis on September 9, 1994 on plaintiff's motion for injunctive relief pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 65. Pursuant to the agreement of the parties and upon the order of the court, Fed.R.Civ.P. 65(a)(2), the matter was consolidated and hearing was had on the merits pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 56. For the reasons stated herein, the summary judgment is granted on behalf of Defendants.

I. FACTS

In April 1994 the Twin Cities Area New Party ("New Party"), a national political organization, convened a meeting at which party members voted to nominate incumbent Minnesota State Representative Andy Dawkins as the New Party candidate for District 65A in the Minnesota House of Representatives. Although Rep. Dawkins had already filed an Affidavit of Candidacy as the candidate of the Democrat-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) for District 65A, he expressed a willingness to accept the New Party nomination in addition to the DFL nomination.

Since the New Party does not nominate candidates in a primary, it must file a nominating petition containing the signatures of ten percent of the persons eligible to vote in the District 65A, with a minimum of 500 valid signatures. Minn.Stat. §§ 204B.03, 204B.08, Subd. 3(c) (1992).

On July 18, 1994 New Party representatives presented to the Ramsey County Department of Property Records and Revenue a nominating petition in Rep. Dawkins' behalf containing some 600 signatures.¹ When the New Party representatives tried to file their petition, Supervisor of Elections and Voter Registration Joan M. Pelzer informed them that Rep. Dawkins had already filed an Affidavit of Candidacy as the DFL candidate. Consequently, Ms. Pelzer, citing Minn.Stat. § 204B.06, subd. 1(b),² refused to accept the New Party's petition.

As Director of the Ramsey County Department of Property Records and Revenue, Lou McKenna is responsible for the administration of Minnesota's election law in Ramsey County. Minn.Stat. §§ 204B.09, subd. 1 and 200.02, subd. 16. As such, Mr. McKenna is named as the defendant in this action. As Secretary of the State of Minnesota, Joan Anderson Growe is responsible for the administration of Minnesota's election laws and is named as a party in this action.

On August 10, 1994 Plaintiff moved the court for a preliminary injunction, alleging, inter alia, that those portions of the Minnesota election statute which require a party candidate to disaffiliate himself from other parties upon the filing of an affidavit of candidacy or a nominating petition are unconstitutional. See, Minn.Stat. §§ 204B.03 (requiring candidates for partisan offices to be nominated by either primary election or nominating petition), 204B.04, Subds. 1 (prohibiting a candidate's name from appearing on the ballot of more than one major political party), and 2 (prohibiting primary election candidates from being nominated by petition), and 204B.06, Subd. 1(b) (1992) (requiring candidates filing affidavits of candidacy to affirm that the candidate has filed no other affidavit of candidacy in the same primary or ensuing general election.) Defendants moved for summary judgment and plaintiffs agreed that the matter is ripe for summary judgment.

Plaintiff contends that the disaffiliation statutes infringe the associational rights guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution by prohibiting it from nominating as it's candidate the person chosen by the members.

The defendants argue that the net effect of the challenged statutes is to assure that the name of the primary election winner appears only once on the general election ballot and it insures that primary election losers do not appear at all. These interests constitute the legitimate interests which justify the burden placed upon plaintiff's associational rights.

II. DISCUSSION

A.

Summary judgment is appropriate if there is no genuine issue of material fact and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c); Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 106 S.Ct. 2548, 91 L.Ed.2d 265 (1986); Unigroup, Inc. v. O'Rourke Storage & Transfer Co., 980 F.2d 1217, 1219-20 (8th Cir.1992). To determine whether genuine issues of material fact exist, a court conducts a two-part inquiry. The court determines materiality from the substantive law governing the claim. Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 248, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 2510, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986). Disputes over facts that might affect the outcome of the lawsuit according to applicable substantive law are material. Id. A material fact dispute is "genuine" if the evidence is sufficient to allow a reasonable jury to return a verdict for the non-moving party. Id. at 248-49, 106 S.Ct. at 2510. In the instant case, the parties agree that there are no issues as to the material facts; this matter concerns a question of law which makes its resolution particularly susceptible to summary judgment.

B.

It is beyond question that the rights of the citizenry to voluntarily associate themselves for partisan political purposes is among the core values protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. Eu v. San Francisco County Democratic Central Committee, 489 U.S. 214, 224, 109 S.Ct. 1013, 1020, 103 L.Ed.2d 271 (1989). All regulation of the election process is not, however, foreclosed by the protection afforded the electoral process by the Constitution. As the Supreme Court observed, "There must be a substantial regulation of elections if they are to be fair and honest and if some sort of order, rather than chaos, is to accompany the democratic processes." Storer v. Brown, 415 U.S. 724, 730, 94 S.Ct. 1274, 1279, 39 L.Ed.2d 714 (1974). The state has broad power to regulate the process of elections, but that power is limited by the strictures imposed by the First Amendment. Tashjian v. Republic Party of Connecticut, 479 U.S. 208, 217, 107 S.Ct. 544, 550, 93 L.Ed.2d 514 (1986).

The Supreme Court has set out the framework in which the constitutionality of state election laws is to be analyzed:

The court must first consider the character and magnitude of the asserted injury to the rights protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments that the plaintiff seeks to vindicate. It then must identify and evaluate the precise interests put forward by the State as justifications for the burden imposed by its rule. In passing judgment, the court must not only determine the legitimacy and strength of each of those interests, it must also consider the extent to which those interests make it necessary to burden the plaintiff's rights. Only after weighing all these factors is the reviewing court in a position to decide whether the challenged provision is unconstitutional.

Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U.S. 780, 789, 103 S.Ct. 1564, 1570, 75 L.Ed.2d 547 (1983) (Citations omitted.); Eu, 489 U.S. at 222, 109 S.Ct. at 1019-20. Moreover, "to the degree that a State would thwart these First and Fourteenth interests by limiting the access of new parties to the ballot, we have called for the demonstration of a corresponding interest sufficiently weighty to justify the limitation, and we have accordingly required any severe restriction to be narrowly drawn to advance a state interest of compelling importance." Norman v. Reed, 502 U.S. 279, 112 S.Ct. 698, 704, 116 L.Ed.2d 711 (1992) (Citations omitted.). However, that a state's system tends to limit the field of candidates from which the voters may choose is not dispositive of the question of the constitutionality of the statute. Burdick v. Takushi, ___ U.S. ___, ___, 112 S.Ct. 2059, 2063, 119 L.Ed.2d 245 (1992). Rather, the inquiry is focused on the "extent to which a challenged regulation burdens First and Fourteenth Amendment rights." Id.

With this background in mind, the court now turns to an examination of the interests of the New Party which are purportedly burdened by the state's disaffiliation statutes and the interests advanced by the state in justification of the statutes.

C.

The New Party argues here that Minnesota's disaffiliation statute infringes upon its rights to select the candidate of its choice. There can be little doubt that at the core of the associational rights protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments is the right of a political party to select "a standard bearer who best represents the party's ideologies and preferences." Eu, 489 U.S. at 224, 109 S.Ct. at 1021. Nor can there be doubt that all electoral regulatory schemes impinge on "the individual's right to vote and his right to associate with others for political ends. Nevertheless, the state's important regulatory interests are generally sufficient to justify reasonable, nondiscriminatory restrictions." Anderson, 460 U.S. at 788, 103 S.Ct. at 1569. In other words, a party's associational rights are not absolute and are subject to some degree of qualification.

Defendants argue that the resolution of this case is determined by reference to Storer v. Brown, 415 U.S. 724, 94 S.Ct. 1274, 39 L.Ed.2d 714 (1974). There, the Supreme Court upheld a California statut...