Opinion ID: 4283041
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Party’s Burdens

Text: 12 This case addresses Utah’s electoral regulations contained in SB54 that target the method by which a QPP selects its nominee to appear on the general election ballot for state and federal offices. In this process both the political party and the state have legitimate constitutional interests that need to be balanced. While states play an important role in “structuring and monitoring the election process, including primaries,” the political parties also have a First Amendment Right of Association that has to be balanced against the state’s interests. Cal. Democratic Party v. Jones, 530 U.S. 567, 572 (2000). It is through primary elections that a “party’s positions on the most significant public policy issues of the day” are often determined, and it is a party’s “nominee who becomes the party’s ambassador to the general electorate in winning it over to the party’s views.” Id. at 575. The URP argues that SB54 infringes on its First Amendment associational rights by forcing it to adopt a candidate-selection process different from that which it would prefer. However, the Supreme Court has recognized that when political parties become involved in a stateadministered primary election, the state acquires a legitimate interest in regulating the manner in which that election unfolds—subject only to the same interestbalancing that occurs throughout the Court’s electoral jurisprudence. The distinction between wholly internal aspects of party administration on one hand and participation in state-run, state-financed elections on the other is at the heart of this case. When a party selects its platform, its Chairman, or even whom it will endorse in the upcoming election, the state generally has no more interest in these internal activities than in the administration of the local Elks lodge or bar association. 13 But when the party’s actions turn outwards to the actual nomination and election of an individual who will swear an oath not to protect the Party, but instead to the Constitution, and when the individual ultimately elected has the responsibility to represent all the residents in his or her district, the state acquires a manifest interest in that activity, and the party’s interest in such activity must share the stage with the state’s manifest interest. The dissent blurs this distinction between the party’s internal and external activity.5 The Supreme Court’s jurisprudence has consistently reflected this difference between a party’s internal mechanisms and its external manifestations. A political party has a First Amendment right to limit its membership as it wishes, and to choose a candidate-selection process that will in its view produce the nominee who best represents its political platform. These rights are circumscribed, however, when the State gives the party a role in the election process—as New York has done here by giving certain parties the right to have their candidates appear with party endorsement on the general-election ballot. Then . . . the State acquires a legitimate governmental interest in ensuring the fairness of the party’s nominating process, enabling it to prescribe what that process must be. N.Y. State Bd. of Elections v. Lopez Torres, 552 U.S. 196, 202–03 (2008) (internal citations omitted). Lopez Torres may be a relatively modern case, but the Supreme Court’s recognition of the state’s vital regulatory role in primary elections is hardly a recent development. As early as 1941 the Supreme Court held that state-administered 5 See Richard H. Pildes, The Constitutionalization of Democratic Politics, 118 Harv. L. Rev. 28, 107, 107 n.323 (2004) (“[C]ourts must engage in direct, functional analysis of the role of parties and primaries in American democracy. That analysis is not furthered by reasoning analogically from the Jaycees, the Boy Scouts, the Mormons, or similar religious or civil-society entities.”). 14 primary elections, as a “necessary step in the choice of candidates for election as representatives[,]” are subject to congressional and state regulation. United States v. Classic, 313 U.S. 299, 319–20 (1941). As our country grappled with the scourge of racial and economic discrimination at the ballot box, the Supreme Court consistently intervened in the so-called “White Primary Cases” to recognize that primary elections—or even pre-primary party activity that restricted access to the primary ballot—were sufficiently “state action” to trigger application of the Reconstruction Amendments. See Terry v. Adams, 345 U.S. 461, 469–70 (1953); Smith v. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649, 663–64 (1944). To be sure, the “White Primary” cases do not stand for the proposition that the “processes by which political parties select their nominees are . . . wholly public affairs that States may regulate freely.” Jones, 530 U.S. at 572–73. Nor do we suggest that a party’s decision to restrict its primary to only convention delegates via the caucus approach is anywhere near the overt discrimination at issue in those cases. Rather our consideration of those cases extends only insomuch as they indicate that a party’s external activities in selecting candidates for public office must necessarily be subject to greater state involvement and scrutiny than its wholly internal machinations.6 6 To use the dissent’s example, the process by which parishioners choose their priest has no external application. See Dissent at 16. A priest does not appear on a staterun, state-financed ballot, and if a priest is successful in an election his duty is to his parish and his faith, not the broader citizenry of the state or district. The state has no interest, then, in the process by which that priest is chosen. But the URP is not a parish or a club, but rather a political association whose activities run the gamut from 15 In recognition of the state’s role in ensuring a democratic and fair primary election the Supreme Court has called it “too plain for argument . . . that the State may . . . insist that intraparty competition be settled before the general election by primary election or by party convention.” Am. Party of Tex. v. White, 415 U.S. 767, 781 (1974). Then, in 2000, the Court elaborated further, ruling that “a state may require parties to use the primary format for selecting their nominees, in order to assure that intraparty competition is resolved in a democratic fashion.” Jones, 530 U.S. at 572 (citing White, 415 U.S. at 781). All told, by the time Lopez Torres arrived in 2008, the Court considered the issue settled, mentioning in passing: “To be sure, we have . . . permitted States to set their faces against ‘party bosses’ by requiring party-candidate selection through processes more favorable to insurgents, such as primaries.” 552 U.S. at 205. We recognize that each of these statements, while instructive, is technically dicta, but it appears to be clearly established dicta. See Jones, 530 U.S. at 594 (Stevens, J., dissenting) (“I think it clear—though the point has never been decided by this Court—‘that a State may require parties to use the primary format for selecting their nominees.’”) (quoting majority). We are “bound by Supreme Court dicta almost as firmly as by the Court’s outright holdings, particularly when the dicta purely internal—such as voting on the party platform—to a hybrid internalexternal—such as nominating candidates who will appear on the general election ballot in the hopes of being elected to represent not the URP, but the broader citizenry of Utah. The entire point of the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence in this area is to recognize that the state’s ability to regulate the association is not the same in the second instance as it is in the first. 16 is recent and not enfeebled by later statements.” Gaylor v. United States, 74 F.3d 214, 217 (10th Cir. 1996) (internal citations omitted). This principle is especially relevant where, as here, the dicta has been explicitly reaffirmed several times, across multiple different eras, by Justices both in support and in dissent. See Tashjian v. Republican Party of Conn., 479 U.S. 208, 237 (1986) (Scalia, J., dissenting) (basing argument on “the validity of the state-imposed primary requirement” because the Supreme Court has “hitherto considered [that validity] ‘too plain for argument’”). Finally, if we were hesitant to follow this dicta, we could perhaps be persuaded by our own circuit having favorably cited—without relying—on this very language as early as 1988. See Rainbow Coal. of Okla. v. Okla State Election Bd., 844 F.2d 740, 745 n.7 (10th Cir. 1988) (noting that “the Supreme Court has pointed out ‘that the State may . . . insist that intraparty competition be settled before the general election by primary election or by party convention’”).7 In short, we are unwilling to ascribe to so many jurists the contention that their reliance on this dicta was “completely assumed and unreasoned.” See Dissent at 37. 7 We are hardly alone in recognizing the weight of this dicta. See, e.g., Alaskan Indep. Party v. Alaska, 545 F.3d 1173, 1178 (9th Cir. 2008) (relying on this dicta to uphold a primary scheme similar to the one at issue here); Cool Moose Party v. Rhode Island, 183 F.3d 80, 83 n.4 (1st Cir. 1999) (suggesting based on White that a mandatory primary is constitutional); Lightfoot v. Eu, 964 F.2d 865, 872 (9th Cir. 1992) (upholding a mandatory primary in part based on dicta from White); Az. Green Party v. Bennett, 20 F. Supp. 3d 740, 748 (D. Ariz. 2014) (citing favorably to Jones to establish that a party could not insist on using a nominating convention to avoid a burdensome state law); Greenville Cty. Republican Party Exec. Comm. v. South Carolina, 824 F. Supp. 2d 655, 666 n.7 (D. S.C. 2011) (relying on White for proposition that a state may “mandate that a single nomination method be used by all candidates and political parties”). 17 Furthermore, even beyond this consistent dicta, the Supreme Court has explicitly upheld a State’s ability to regulate the scope of a party primary. In Clingman v. Beaver, the Court considered the constitutionality of an Oklahoma law restricting the right to vote in party primary elections to voters who were registered as either independents or as members of the party. 544 U.S. at 584. There, a party that wanted to open its primary to all registered voters sued, and the Court found that the restrictive regulation only “minimally” burdened the party. Id. at 590. The Court so held because “Oklahoma’s law does not regulate the [party’s] internal processes, its authority to exclude unwanted members, or its capacity to communicate with the public.” Id. The same could be said of SB54. SB54 does not regulate the party’s internal process; in fact its grand compromise was to maintain the URP’s traditional caucus system as a path onto the primary ballot. Furthermore, because the First Lawsuit excised the Unaffiliated Voter Provision, the law no longer proscribes the URP’s authority to exclude unwanted members from its primary. Finally, nothing in SB54 prevents the URP from endorsing the candidate of its choice and using traditional advertising channels to communicate that endorsement to the state’s voters. Contra Eu v. S.F. Cty. Democratic Cent. Comm., 489 U.S. 214, 222–29 (1989) (invalidating a California ban on primary endorsements). In light of the Supreme Court’s recent and consistent dicta, as well as its holding in Clingman, we see no choice but to find the Either or Both Provision only minimally burdensome on the URP. 18 As a final salvo, however, the URP argues that the Either or Both Provision imposes severe burdens on its associational rights because it leaves the party vulnerable to being saddled with a nominee with whom it does not agree. See Aplt. Br. at 40. We are not so persuaded. First and foremost, this case is not, as the dissent would suggest, about who the candidates are, but rather who the deciders are. SB54 was not designed to change the substantive candidates who emerged from the parties, but rather only to ensure that all the party members have some voice in deciding who their party’s representative will be in the general election. SB54’s goal was to ensure only that the will of all the URP was not being truncated by an overly restrictive and potentially unrepresentative nominating process. Balancing the State’s interests against the interests of an association requires us to define the association with the requisite specificity. Here, where the argument is that SB54 may lead to a party nominating a candidate with whom it may not agree,8 the question before this Court is whether the burdens imposed on the URP by 8 This is not to suggest that we disagree with the dissent’s observation that “[p]olitical science literature has long observed parties have several components, only one of which is their membership.” Dissent at 24. But in this context, in which the question is whether the party is being forced to associate with individuals with whom it may not agree, the Supreme Court has instructed that the relevant “Party” is the collection of party members. In Jones, the Supreme Court distinguishes between “party leadership[’s]” ability to endorse a candidate and “party members’” ability to choose a nominee. 530 U.S. at 580. This distinction makes clear who the Jones majority is referring to when it references “the party” in the final sentences of the two ensuing paragraphs: “In any event, the ability of the party leadership to endorse a candidate does not assist the party rank and file, who may not themselves agree with the party leadership, but do not want the party’s choice decided by outsiders. . . . 19 SB54 are minimal or severe. See Aplt. Br. at 31 (defining the first step of the Anderson-Burdick test as whether the law burdens a “political party’s constitutional rights.”). Put another way, our task today is to analyze SB54’s burdens on the Utah Republican Party, or, put still differently, the group of like-minded individuals in Utah who have joined together under the banner of the Republican Party—rather than just the leadership of the party. The URP, like all political parties, has “a right to identify the people who constitute the association, and to select a standard bearer who best represents the party’s ideologies and preferences.” Eu, 489 U.S. at 224 (internal citations and quotations omitted) (emphasis added). That is why the district court declared the Unaffiliated Voter Provision, which forced the URP to allow nonmembers to help select its candidates, unconstitutional in the First Lawsuit. URP II, 144 F. Supp. 3d. at 1280. But now that the Unaffiliated Voter Provision has been excised from SB54, the URP is no longer in danger of fielding a general election candidate who does not enjoy the support of at least a plurality of the voting members of the Utah Republican Party.9 It is true, as has happened since the passage of SB54, in fact,10 that the There is simply no substitute for a party’s selecting its own candidates.” Id. at 581 (emphasis added). 9 The Court is aware that under the new process, unlike under the old—in which no more than two candidates could advance from the URP convention to the primary ballot—the URP’s general election candidate could potentially receive a plurality, rather than a majority, of votes in the primary election. The Court recognizes the party’s interest in avoiding this outcome. However, while this interest was 20 eventual nominee may not enjoy the support of a plurality of the roughly 3,500 party delegates that comprise the URP’s caucus electorate. But that failure does not implicate the associational rights of the party, which consists of the roughly 600,000 registered Republicans in Utah, and which is not limited to the party-conventiondelegates. The party leaders and convention delegates are still free to communicate to the rest of their party which of the candidates on the primary ballot the leadership supports.11 But if the URP wants to open its doors to roughly 600,000 people across the state of Utah, the associational rights of the party are not severely burdened when the will of those voters might reflect a different choice than would be made by the party leadership. To say otherwise is to erroneously conclude that the rights and interests of the association extend only to the rights and interests of the party leadership. See Tashjian, 479 U.S. at 215 (“A major state political party necessarily mentioned at Oral Argument, it was not included in the argument section of the URP’s brief, and we “routinely have declined to consider arguments that are not raised, or are inadequately presented in an appellant’s opening brief.” Bronson v. Swensen, 500 F.3d 1099, 1104 (10th Cir. 2007). Furthermore, even if we do consider this newly advanced interest, we find that, in light of this country’s historic recognition of the legitimacy of plurality-based elections, the additional burden this imposes on the URP is, at most, minimal. Cf. Whitcomb v. Chavis, 403 U.S. 124, 160 (1971) (“[W]e are unprepared to hold that district-based elections decided by plurality vote are unconstitutional . . . .”.). 10 See John Verhovek, Saisha Talwar, and Adam Kelsey, Moderate mayor wins republican primary to replace Rep. Chaffetz in Utah, ABCNews.com, Aug. 15, 2017, http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/utahs-special-election-primary/story?id=49216793. 11 The URP may still communicate that information using the traditional channels of political advertising. 21 includes individuals playing a broad spectrum of roles in the organization’s activities.”).12 In further support, we need only look to the Supreme Court for unambiguous direction: “To be sure, we have . . . permitted States to set their faces against ‘party bosses’ by requiring party-candidate selection through processes more favorable to insurgents, such as primaries.” Lopez Torres, 552 U.S. at 205.13 12 We also note that, in its Complaint filed in this lawsuit, the URP repeatedly referred to SB54 as burdening the rights of “the Party and its members.” See, e.g., Aplt. App. at 26 (“The First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution guarantee to the Party and its members the right to associate in a political party[.] . . . These are core Constitutional freedoms held individually and collectively by the members of the Utah Republican Party, and by the Party itself.”) (emphasis added). This accords with how the Supreme Court has identified the constitutional right of association as it relates to a political party. See Norman v. Reed, 502 U.S. 279, 288 (1992) (“For more than two decades, this Court has recognized the constitutional right of citizens to create and develop new political parties. The right derives from the First and Fourteenth Amendments and advances the constitutional interest of like-minded voters to gather in pursuit of common political ends, thus enlarging the opportunities of all voters to express their political preferences.”). 13 The dissent cites to Eu, Dissent at 25, as a case where, according to the dissent, the Supreme Court draws a distinction between the “Party” and its “members.” However that is not an accurate reading of Eu. It is true that in Eu the Court uses the phrase “the parties and their members,” but that phrase is used inclusively rather than drawing a distinction between a party and its members. 489 U.S. at 232. The rights of “the Party and their members” emphasizes the unity of the Party and its members rather than attempting to draw a distinction between them. See also Timmons, 520 U.S. at 351. Eu is also distinguishable in that it dealt primarily with the issue of a political party in the speech, as opposed to associational, context. Party leadership may enjoy different First Amendment speech rights than do individual members. Jones itself discusses this distinction. 530 U.S. at 580 (“The ability of the party leadership to endorse a candidate [speech context] is simply no substitute for the party members’ ability to choose their own nominee [associational context].”). This line leaves little doubt that the scope of a political organization includes its members. 22 The unambiguous import of Lopez Torres is that in order to “set their faces against ‘party bosses’” states may require primary elections. See id. (emphasis added). This language establishes that the associational rights of a political party expand beyond the party leadership, and would be toothless if party bosses could dictate how candidates can qualify for the primary ballot, perhaps, for example, by requiring candidates to win the support of “party bosses” in order to qualify for the primary ballot, leading to primary “elections” with a single candidate on the ballot. See also Alaskan Indep. Party v. Alaska, 545 F.3d 1173, 1179–80 (9th Cir. 2008) (noting its skepticism that a scheme similar to that at issue in this case imposes a severe burden on a party’s associational rights). Finally, the dissent relies on Jones, but Jones is not contrary to our holding. In that case, the Supreme Court held that states could not force parties to allow nonmembers—“those who, at best, have refused to affiliate with the party, and, at worst, have expressly affiliated with a rival”—to participate in that party’s primary election. Jones, 530 U.S. at 577. Understandably, the Court held that such a “forced association” intruded on the party’s First Amendment associational rights. Jones, 530 U.S. at 577; see also Democratic Party of the U.S. v. Wisc. ex rel. La Follette, 450 U.S. 107, 123–24 (1981). But no such burden exists in this case. When SB54 was initially passed, it did contain a significant associational burden in that it forced the party to associate with unaffiliated voters. However, that issue was fought in the first lawsuit, and the URP won. Now the URP’s nominee is decided only by those individuals who have chosen 23 to associate with the Party. Following the first lawsuit, SB54 is perfectly compliant with the holding in Jones. For these reasons, we conclude that SB54 does not impose a severe burden on the URP by potentially allowing the nomination of a candidate with whom the URP leadership disagrees. Therefore, in recognition of the Supreme Court’s repeated and un-recanted dicta, we hold that the Either or Both Provision is at most only a minimal burden on the URP’s First Amendment associational rights.14