Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-13-15085/USCOURTS-ca9-13-15085-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Richard Becker
Appellant
Debra Bowen
Appellee
Peta Lindsay
Appellant
Peace and Freedom Party
Appellant

Document Text:

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

PETA LINDSAY; RICHARD BECKER;

PEACE AND FREEDOM PARTY,

Plaintiffs-Appellants,

v.

DEBRA BOWEN, in her official

capacity as Secretary of the State of

California,

Defendant-Appellee.

No. 13-15085

D.C. No.

2:12-cv-00853-

GEB-AC

OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Eastern District of California

Garland E. Burrell, Jr., Senior District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted

February 13, 2014—San Francisco, California

Filed May 6, 2014

Before: Alex Kozinski, Chief Judge, Diarmuid F.

O’Scannlain and Mary H. Murguia, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Chief Judge Kozinski

 Case: 13-15085, 05/06/2014, ID: 9084045, DktEntry: 20-1, Page 1 of 9
2 LINDSAY V. BOWEN

SUMMARY*

Civil Rights

The panel affirmed the district court’s dismissal of a suit

alleging that plaintiff Peta Lindsay’s constitutional rights

were violated when she was excluded, pursuant to California

regulation, from appearing on the 2012 presidential primary

ballot as a candidate for the Peace and Freedom Party because

she was twenty-seven years old and therefore not

constitutionally eligible to be president.

The panel held that any burden on First Amendment

rights that resulted from California’s age requirement, which

simply recognized the lines that the Constitution already

drew, was minimal. Moreover, the burden was amply

justified by the state’s asserted interest in protecting the

integrity of the election process and avoiding voter confusion.

The panel rejected the equal protection claim, holding that

treating ineligible candidates differently from eligible ones

was rationally related to the state’s interest in maintaining the

integrity of the election process. Moreover, the panel held

that the Secretary of State does not violate the Equal

Protection Clause by excluding from the ballot candidates

who are indisputably ineligible to serve, while listing those

with a colorable claim of eligibility.

The panel rejected the argument that the Twentieth

Amendment prohibits states from determining the

* This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has

been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

 Case: 13-15085, 05/06/2014, ID: 9084045, DktEntry: 20-1, Page 2 of 9
LINDSAY V. BOWEN 3

qualifications of presidential candidates, holding that nothing

in the Twentieth Amendment’s text or history suggested that

it precludes state authorities from excluding a candidate with

a known ineligibility from the presidential ballot.

COUNSEL

Robert E. Barnes (argued), Malibu, California, for PlaintiffsAppellants.

Kamala D. Harris, Attorney General of California, Douglas

J. Woods, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Tamar Pachter,

Supervising Deputy Attorney General, Alexandra Robert

Gordon (argued), Deputy Attorney General, San Francisco,

California, for Defendant-Appellee.

 Case: 13-15085, 05/06/2014, ID: 9084045, DktEntry: 20-1, Page 3 of 9
4 LINDSAY V. BOWEN

OPINION

KOZINSKI, Chief Judge:

Like Stephen Colbert before her, Peta Lindsay didn’t

want to become president of the United States. She just

wanted to run. To that end, she sought a place on the 2012

presidential primary ballot for the Peace and Freedom Party. 

She properly filed her nomination papers and, as required by

California law, was generally recognized as a candidate for

that party. See Cal. Elec. Code § 6720. (In her brief, Lindsay

refers to Election Code section 6041. But that section

pertains to the Democratic Party. We therefore assume that

she means to refer to section 6720, which pertains to the

Peace and Freedom Party.)

Nevertheless, when California Secretary of State Debra

Bowen distributed the certified list of the candidates

generallyrecognized to be seeking their parties’ nominations,

Lindsay discovered that her name wasn’t on it. See Cal. Elec.

Code §§ 6722, 6951. At twenty-seven years of age, Lindsay

wasn’t constitutionally eligible to be president. See U.S.

Const. art. II, § 1, cl. 5. But was she eligible to run?

Lindsay claims she was, and so brings suit seeking

vindication of her rights under the First Amendment, the

Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and

the Twentieth Amendment. She is joined by one of her

supporters and the Peace and Freedom Party. For

convenience, we will generally refer only to her.

The district court dismissed the case with prejudice and

Lindsay appeals. Because the case is “capable of repetition,

yet evading review,” it is not moot. See Fed. Election

 Case: 13-15085, 05/06/2014, ID: 9084045, DktEntry: 20-1, Page 4 of 9
LINDSAY V. BOWEN 5

Comm’n v. Wis. Right to Life, Inc., 551 U.S. 449, 462–64

(2007).

I. First Amendment Claims

Although regulation of who can appear on the ballot

“inevitablyaffects” free speech, association and voting rights,

Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U.S. 780, 788 (1983), we uphold

restrictions that impose only a “[l]esser burden[]” on those

rights so long as they are reasonably related to the state’s

“important regulatory interest[],” Timmons v. Twin Cities

Area New Party, 520 U.S. 351, 358 (1997) (internal quotation

marks omitted).

Age requirements, like residency requirements and term

limits, are “neutral candidacy qualification[s] . . . which the

State certainly has the right to impose.” Bates v. Jones,

131 F.3d 843, 847 (9th Cir. 1997) (en banc); see also Rubin

v. City of Santa Monica, 308 F.3d 1008, 1014 (9th Cir. 2002)

(restrictions aren’t severe when they are “generally

applicable, even-handed, [and] politically neutral”). 

Distinctions based on undisputed ineligibility due to age do

not “limit political participation by an identifiable political

group whose members share a particular viewpoint,

associational preference or economic status.” Bates, 131 F.3d

at 847 (quoting Anderson, 460 U.S. at 793) (internal

quotation marks and alterations omitted). They simply

recognize the lines that the Constitution already draws. Any

burden on Lindsay’s speech and association rights is therefore

minimal.

This burden is amply justified by California’s asserted

interest in “protecting the integrity of the election process and

avoiding voter confusion.” See Timmons, 520 U.S. at

 Case: 13-15085, 05/06/2014, ID: 9084045, DktEntry: 20-1, Page 5 of 9
6 LINDSAY V. BOWEN

364–65. Lindsay alleges neither that Secretary Bowen

prevented other Peace and Freedom Party candidates from

running nor that she interfered with Lindsay’s or the party’s

ability to advocate for the party’s platform. See Anderson,

460 U.S. at 791 n.12. She argues primarily that Secretary

Bowen’s refusal to place her on the presidential primary

ballot denied her and her party the “right to present and

support an alternative to the two-party system.” But there is

neither any “fundamental right to run for public office,”

NAACP v. Jones, 131 F.3d 1317, 1324 (9th Cir. 1997), nor

any right “to use the ballot itself to send a particularized

message,” Timmons, 520 U.S. at 363. That “a particular

individual may not appear on the ballot as a particular party’s

candidate does not severely burden that party’s associational

rights.” Id. at 359. Lindsay and the party have ways of

promoting their policy agenda other than placing Lindsay’s

name on the ballot, such as encouraging voters to write her

name in. Moreover, the voting rights of Lindsay’s supporter

were not severely burdened by Lindsay’s exclusion from the

ballot. See Burdick v. Takushi, 504 U.S. 428, 440 n.10

(1992).

Lindsay also claims that the Secretary lacked authority to

keep her off the primary ballot. She points to California

Election Code section 6720, which states that the Secretary

“shall place the name of a candidate upon the Peace and

Freedom Party presidential preference ballot when [he] has

determined that the candidate is generally advocated for or

recognized throughout the United States or California as

activelyseeking the presidential nomination.” Lindsay is free

to bring such a claim in state court but it has no bearing on

this lawsuit, which is based entirely on federal law.

 Case: 13-15085, 05/06/2014, ID: 9084045, DktEntry: 20-1, Page 6 of 9
LINDSAY V. BOWEN 7

Nor is this a case where a candidate’s qualifications were

disputed. Everyone agrees that Lindsay couldn’t hold the

office for which she was trying to run. Lindsay therefore

could never have been a legitimate contender for the

presidency, and there’s no doubt that “a State has an interest,

if not a duty, to protect the integrity of its political processes

from frivolous or fraudulent candidacies.” See Bullock v.

Carter, 405 U.S. 134, 145 (1972). Holding that Secretary

Bowen couldn’t exclude Lindsay from the ballot, despite her

admission that she was underage, would mean that anyone,

regardless of age, citizenship or any other constitutional

ineligibility would be entitled to clutter and confuse our

electoral ballot. Nothing in the First Amendment compels

such an absurd result.

II. Equal Protection Claim

Lindsay claims an Equal Protection Clause violation; she

says that she “is similarly situated to the other candidates . . .

because she qualified for and won the support of the Peace

and Freedom Party.” To the extent this is an argument that

state officials can’t draw distinctions between candidates who

are clearly ineligible to become president and those who

aren’t, it fails: “The Constitution does not require things that

are different in fact or opinion to be treated in law as though

they were the same.” Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202, 216

(1982) (internal quotation marks and alterations omitted); see

also Am. Party of Tex. v. White, 415 U.S. 767, 781 (1974). 

Those who can’t legally assume office, even if elected, are

undeniably different from those who can. Because including

ineligible candidates on the ballot could easily cause voter

confusion, treating ineligible candidates differently from

eligible ones is rationally related to the state’s interest in

maintaining the integrity of the election process. See Ventura

 Case: 13-15085, 05/06/2014, ID: 9084045, DktEntry: 20-1, Page 7 of 9
8 LINDSAY V. BOWEN

Mobilehome Cmtys. Owners Ass’n v. City of San

Buenaventura, 371 F.3d 1046, 1055 (9th Cir. 2004).

Lindsay also seems to argue that Secretary Bowen used

age as a mere pretext to “singl[e] out a minor party and a

particular candidate, the only African American female

candidate for the Presidency . . . and [that the Secretary]

exercised no such usurped authority, for other candidates for

the Presidency, such as major party primary candidates and

other similarly situated individuals.” But she offers no proof,

beyond conclusory allegations of discrimination, that the

Secretary had any such ulterior motive. See Ashcroft v. Iqbal,

129 S. Ct. 1937, 1949 (2009); Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly,

550 U.S. 544, 555–56 (2007). While claiming that similarly

situated candidates were treated differently than she was,

Lindsay can’t identify a single person who appeared on the

California ballot despite admitting that he wasn’t qualified. 

See N. Pacifica LLC v. City of Pacifica, 526 F.3d 478, 486

(9th Cir. 2008); Ventura, 371 F.3d at 1055.

Lindsay points to 2008 presidential candidate John

McCain, who some considered to be ineligible to hold office

because he was born outside the United States. But, at worst,

McCain’s eligibilitywas disputed. He never conceded that he

was ineligible to serve, and it was generally assumed that he

could. The Secretary does not violate the Equal Protection

Clause by excluding from the ballot candidates who are

indisputably ineligible to serve, while listing those with a

colorable claim of eligibility. Because those two groups

stand on a different footing, the Secretary is entitled to

exclude the former while including the latter. See Robinson

v. Bowen, 567 F. Supp. 2d 1144, 1146–47 (N.D. Cal. 2008);

Keyes v. Bowen, 117 Cal. Reptr. 3d 207, 214–16 (Cal. Ct.

App. 2010).

 Case: 13-15085, 05/06/2014, ID: 9084045, DktEntry: 20-1, Page 8 of 9
LINDSAY V. BOWEN 9

III. Dormant Twentieth Amendment Claim

The Twentieth Amendment provides that, “if the

President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice

President elect shall act as President until a President shall

have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the

case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President

elect shall have qualified.” U.S. Const. amend. XX, § 3. 

Lindsay argues that this amendment prohibits states from

determining the qualifications of presidential candidates.

It’s far from clear that the Twentieth Amendment gives

rise to a private right of action. Cf. Golden State Transit

Corp. v. City of L.A., 493 U.S. 103, 107 (1989) (Supremacy

Clause doesn’t create any enforceable rights). But, even if it

does, nothing in the Twentieth Amendment states or implies

that Congress has the exclusive authority to pass on the

eligibility of candidates for president. The amendment

merely grants Congress the authority to determine how to

proceed if neither the president elect nor the vice president

elect is qualified to hold office, a problem for which there

was previously no express solution. See 75 Cong. Rec. 3831

(1932) (statement of Rep. Cable). Candidates may, of course,

become ineligible to serve after they are elected (but before

they start their service) due to illness or other misfortune. Or,

a previously unknown ineligibility may be discerned after the

election. The Twentieth Amendment addresses such

contingencies. Nothing in its text or history suggests that it

precludes state authorities from excluding a candidate with a

known ineligibility from the presidential ballot.

AFFIRMED.

 Case: 13-15085, 05/06/2014, ID: 9084045, DktEntry: 20-1, Page 9 of 9