Behind Carl Lewis' Victory: The Court's Reasoning

by: the_promised_land

Tue Sep 13, 2011 at 06:00:00 PM EDT

Is this the end of the road? Maybe - at least it's more likely the end of the road than any of the prior rulings. A decision of a three-judge panel of a U.S. Court of Appeals can be appealed to all judges on the panel ("en banc") or to the U.S. Supreme Court. Given that ballots are just days from printing, that would all have to happen really quickly. An en banc hearing could happen, given that today's decision was a close one - 2-1, with Judge Scirica (a former Republican State Assemblyman from PA himself, and an appointee of President Reagan) dissenting from the majority opinion of Judges Ambro (appointed by President Clinton) and Vanaskie (appointed originally by President Clinton and elevated to the Court of Appeals last year by President Obama). But it's also quite possible that the full court would simply stand especially with the short time available - all in all, en banc hearings are rare. A Supreme Court intervention seems even less likely (this isn't quite Bush v. Gore).

For the story behind the decision, read below the jump...

the State has a paramount interest in ensuring that (1) its candidates for State Senate are familiar with their constituents and the concerns and issues relevant to New Jersey, and (2) its citizens are familiar with their candidates and the platforms, ideas, and opinions espoused by those candidates.

In contrast, the appeals court ruled 2-1 that in fact the state needed to show a "compelling state interest" standard. Because all we have is a summary so far (the full opinion will follow soon), we don't know exactly why they found this - but the citation to a case called Wellford v. Battaglia provides a hint. Basically, in that case (from Delaware in 1972), the court found that there was a compelling interest in voters having as great a range of options as possible, and that a restriction of such choices had to be justified by a compelling interest.

The most likely reasoning is thus that Guadagno never showed such a compelling interest in keeping Lewis off the ballot, and thus he is allowed to be on the ballot. It will be interesting to see the decision's exact reasoning - and whether it might be precedential in the future for other ballot access questions in New Jersey, in establishing that stopping voters from having a wide range of choice requires careful consideration and compelling justification.

In the meantime, Carl Lewis' campaign is off and running - again. Congratulations to Lewis' attorney, William Tambussi, on a hard-fought victory.