Rome, GA — Federal Judge Billy Ray yesterday issued his opinion in an attempt to dismiss the Catoosa GOP case brought in federal court. At issue is the Catoosa GOP’s right of freedom of association and free speech under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This dismissal provides grounds for the Catoosa GOP to appeal, and take the case to the next level in the federal court system for review, and that is exactly what they are going to do!
“In spite of this hurdle,” said Catoosa GOP Chairwoman Joanna Hildreth, “we are going to continue to push this case forward and expect that we will prevail in the end!”
“We applaud the Catoosa GOP for continuing the fight for accountability within the GOP by appealing this dismissal,” said GRA President Nathaniel Darnell. “We feel confident that as this cases moves its way up in the appeals process, closer to the U.S. Supreme Court, the likelihood of the court ruling in their favor rises substantially due to the clear judicial precedent.”
As you may recall, back in March the Catoosa GOP conducted candidate qualifying and they implemented a new procedure that required all candidates wishing to run as a Republican to interview with the party officials to determine if the candidate shared Republican ideology. Four candidates who were incumbent commissioners with a record of raising taxes, restricting the rights of citizens to own chickens, or had endorsed a Democrat, were refused because the local party believed they did not meet the minimum qualification to be called a “Republican.”
Rather than running as Independents or Democrats, the four candidates chose to sue the local party, and a local judge ordered the board of elections to place the candidates on the Republicans Party primary ballot against the will of the party.
Recent SCOTUS precedent on this subject have been unequivocal in protecting the rights of persons and entities in both their associations and their speech. If civil governments can get away with forcing a candidate to be able to run as a Republican, then that opens the flood-gates for violations of other associations. According to the same logic the government could force a Baptist Church to accept a Buddhist or Atheist as an ordained minister in their church. The government could require Coca-cola to have an executive from a corporate competitor like Pepsi on their Board! There is no limit to how association rights could be violated.
In the opinion, this lower court federal Judge here has taken the bait from the attorneys representing the R.I.N.O. candidates and attempted to dismiss the case supposedly on a lack of standing. The reasoning is that since the Catoosa GOP was not supposedly forced to qualify the candidates to run in the Republican Primary, but instead the government forced the BOE to go around the Catoosa GOP and allow them on the Republican primary ballot, that therefore the Catoosa GOP suffered no injury in being forced to associate as Republicans with the candidates.
Most people today consider the old “arranged” betrothal approach to marriage, where guardians selected their children’s marriage partner for them without their consent, as absurd. But that’s what you have here. The reasoning is like saying: “Your right to choose your marriage partner wasn’t violated because you didn’t make the choice on who you would marry. Your guardians made that decision for you.” Huh?
The opinion at least acknowledges that in the Dukes case precedent the state party was allowed to block a candidate from running as a Republican in a federal presidential election, but alleges that this is different here because this case involves counties. Again, huh? So a state party can block a candidate from running for nation–wide office, but a county party cannot block a candidate from running for county office? Based on what line of reasoning? How is that equitable? The judge fails to explain.
Obviously, a county party cannot block a candidate from running for state or federal office. But that is not what we have here. In this case we have a county party operating totally within its jurisdiction to block only county candidates from running as Republicans in the county only.
The opinion furthermore cites a state law in an attempt to use it to super-cede constitutional law. We all know that constitutional law trumps statutory law. O.C.G.A. § 21-2-153 is cited, saying that “all candidates for party nomination in a state or county primary shall qualify as such candidates in accordance with the procedural rules of the their party” provided that the candidates meet the other statutory requirements (emphasis added). The argument the R.I.N.O. candidates’ attorneys have been making from the beginning is that candidates are only required to follow procedural requirements, and may not be subject to substantive requirements (i.e., whether they vote in accordance with Republican policy positions).
This line of argument assumes that substantive requirements and procedural requirements are necessarily mutually exclusive. They are not always. In the case of Catoosa GOP, the elected GOP committee voted to make a substantive review of a candidates’ past performance and messaging as part of the procedural requirements for running in the Republican primary. Procedurally in Catoosa, the county GOP has to vote to approve a candidate before they are allowed to qualify. It is similar to a church or denomination being able to reject an applicant for minister if they find evidence that suggests the applicant does not share their doctrines.
The Republican voters in Catoosa County elected the Catoosa GOP leadership with the power to set such procedures and to review such candidates so that they could inform the low-information Republican electorate in the community (who don’t have time to scrutinize the candidates) whether they will truly represent the minimum standards necessary for the Republican brand. It is a violation of the voter’s rights to steal this protective ability from their elected representatives.
Ballot Questions
The rest of the opinion deals with the ballot questions the Catoosa GOP submitted for the Catoosa Republican Primary ballot. The judge argues that the ballot questions may be blocked in this case because it’s the government who is providing the ballots that the Catoosa GOP is using. The idea is that the ballot questions might appear to be an endorsement of the Catoosa GOP’s speech by the government.
But ballot questions often present messages that are controversial about a plethora of subjects. Allowing the government to start screening and filtering out ballot questions on particular topics means that a government could effectively have the power to block any questions that dealt with something about which the government disagreed.
Support the Catoosa County Republican Party in this law-fare case by donating to their GiveSendGo here: https://www.givesendgo.com/supportjoannahildreth/.
Comments: 2
I agree. We need to fight this all the way to the state Supreme Court
The candidates could have run as a Democrat, independent, libertarian or constitution party. Why didn’t they? Their votes showed they expanded government control of person liberties. This seems simple to me but someone wants a precedent. Nothing happens by accident.
People in the community need to sue them for infringing on their freedoms. I hope they are supporting the Catoosa Republican Party and mounting a campaign against the democrats in Republican clothing.