Court Opinion

ID: 9700224
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 21:16:34.393032+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:05.546136
License: Public Domain

FRANK A. KAUFMAN, District Judge (dissenting):
The motion to dismiss is granted. Counsel may submit an order dismissing the complaint with costs.
Maryland’s Constitution provides that county officers shall be elected once every four years for four-year terms. Md.Const, art. XVII Md.Ann.Code vol. 9A (1963 Repl. Vol.). Section 11 of Article XVII provides in part: “The purpose of this Article is to reduce the number of elections, by providing that all State and county elections shall be held only in every fourth year * *
Maryland’s election statute, as the majority points out, “limits access to the primary election or primary meeting route for obtaining a position on the ballot only to political parties which participated in the last preceding general election” (emphasis in the majority opinion herein). General elections take place every two years in Maryland. Thus, a party which confines itself to countywide efforts can never field a slate of candidates, on a once every four years *652basis, except by the primary petition route. The majority’s opinion herein concludes that Maryland’s petition procedure is not “unduly” or “particularly” “onerous,” that “[tjhere is a legitimate state interest * * * in encouraging new parties to take part in the entire political process and not to limit their scope of activities solely to one level of governmental organization in order to make them more truly effective,” and that a party seeking county-wide office only can be relegated “to a different and more difficult procedure of placing [its] candidates on the general election ballot.” To my mind, the difficulty with those conclusions lies in the fact that the petition road prevents the establishment of a well organized political party capable of successfully opposing, on a continuous or long-time basis, a political party with access to the primary election or primary meeting machinery— machinery forbidden to the county-wide party regardless of the success of its candidates at the polls.
The majority fears that “[t]he presence of a plethora of political parties would necessarily be a source of confusion to the electorate,” and that “[n]umerous political parties would also make increasingly difficult the election of candidates with majority support from the electorate without resort to run-off elections and the attendant expense to the state that they would create.” In Williams v. Rhodes, 393 U.S. 23, 33, 89 S.Ct. 5, 12 (1968), Mr. Justice Black wrote:
* * * It is true that the existence of multitudinous fragmentary groups might justify some regulatory control but in Ohio at the present time this danger seems to us no more than “theoretically imaginable.” No such remote danger can justify the immediate and crippling impact on the basic constitutional rights involved in this case. [Footnote omitted.]
It is true that in Williams, Mr. Justice Black’s above-quoted words were written in the context of issues posed by the Ohio law which differ from those presented herein. But those words would seem equally applicable in this case. The permanent and continuing statutory denial to a county-wide party of the opportunity to get on the ballot other than by way of the petition route imposes a very heavy burden on the achievement by a county-wide party of that cohesiveness and permanency of organization and existence which the Maryland law makes possible for a state-wide party in the county involved. That denial also makes it most difficult for any county-wide party to compete with state-wide parties, within the county in question, on anything like an equal basis. Such unequal treatment of a county-wide party as contrasted with a state-wide party establishes the type of unreasonable classification which Williams teaches is forbidden by the equal protection principles inherent in the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court’s application of the one man-one vote principles of Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 84 S.Ct. 1362, 12 L.Ed.2d 506 (1964), to units of local government, such as county governing bodies (Avery v. Midland County, 390 U.S. 474, 88 S.Ct. 1114, 20 L.Ed.2d 45 (1968)) and school boards (Hadley v. Junior College District, 397 U.S. 50, 90 S.Ct. 791, 25 L.Ed.2d 45 (1970)), would seem to illustrate the importance of subjecting local and state-wide voting issues to the same standards. And the heavy burden which must be borne to carve out and justify a special classification in a local election contest is illuminated by Kramer v. Union Free School District, 395 U.S. 621, 89 S.Ct. 1886, 23 L.Ed.2d 583 (1969), involving voter qualifications for local school board elections.1 The possible dangers of fragmentation discussed herein in the majority opinion do not, in my judgment constitute a showing sufficient to shoulder that burden.
The majority opinion cites and discusses Barnhart v. Mandel, 311 F.Supp. 814 (D.Md.1970), in which our decree bends certain statutory language to avoid facial unconstitutionality. In this *653case, additional bending of a number of the sections of Maryland’s election statute is necessary in order to permit NBMC to utilize the primary meeting or the primary election route. The majority refers to many of those sections and the not inconsiderable obstacles they pose. In Barnhart, we gave the State, in the context of a different problem, the opportunity to choose between the primary election and the primary meeting routes. In this case, I believe we are either required to follow the same procedure or to hold all or certain portions of the statute invalid.
In Williams (393 U.S. at 32, 89 S.Ct. 5), Mr. Justice Black concluded that the State must establish a “compelling interest” before it may be permitted to impose “unequal burdens” on political parties. The majority opinion in this case concludes that there are compelling interests which permit the State of Maryland to impose permanently on a county-wide party the petition route as that party’s only method of getting on the ballot, and at the same time to make the primary election route or the primary meeting route available to a state-wide party competing for county offices with the county-wide party. I respectfully dissent because I conclude that such a difference in classification creates an unduly onerous burden which is not justified by any compelling state interest and which therefore constitutes a violation of equal protection principles.

. In Kramer (395 U.S. at 626, 89 S.Ct. 1886), the Court cites and refers to Williams.