''Anderson v. Celebrezze'', 460 U.S. 780 (1983), was a
United States Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
case in which the Court held that Ohio's filing deadline for
independent candidates
An independent or non-partisan politician is a politician not affiliated with any political party or bureaucratic association. There are numerous reasons why someone may stand for office as an independent.
Some politicians have political views th ...
was unconstitutional.
Background
John B. Anderson was a declared candidate for the
1980 presidential election. On May 16, 1980, Anderson's supporters filed a nominating petition to the
Ohio Secretary of State
The Secretary of State of Ohio is an elected statewide official in the State of Ohio. The Secretary of state is responsible for overseeing elections in the state; registering business entities (corporations, etc.) and granting them the author ...
's office. Secretary
Anthony J. Celebrezze Jr. rejected the petition because it had not been filed by the state's deadline of seventy-five days prior to the
presidential primary. At that time, the primary election was held on the Tuesday following the first Monday in June. In 1980, the deadline would have been March 20.
The
federal district court
The United States district courts are the trial courts of the U.S. federal judiciary. There is one district court for each federal judicial district, which each cover one U.S. state or, in some cases, a portion of a state. Each district cou ...
ruled that the statute was unconstitutional on two grounds. First, the statute violated the
First Amendment to the United States Constitution
The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution prevents the government from making laws that regulate an establishment of religion, or that prohibit the free exercise of religion, or abridge the freedom of speech, the ...
by placing too high of a burden to petition the government. Second, the deadline was earlier than that required by candidates in the major parties, thereby violating the
Equal Protection Clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. That decision was later reversed by the
United States Court of Appeals
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,
which was itself overturned by the
United States Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
.
Opinion of the Court
Majority opinion
The
United States Supreme Court
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overturned the appellate court's ruling and reinstated that of the district court. Among other points, the majority stated:
An early filing deadline may have a substantial impact on independent-minded voters. In election campaigns, particularly those which are national in scope, the candidates and the issues simply do not remain static over time. Various candidates rise and fall in popularity; domestic and international developments bring new issues to center stage and may affect voters' assessments of national problems. Such developments will certainly affect the strategies of candidates who have already entered the race; they may also create opportunities for new candidates. See A. Bickel, Reform and Continuity 87-89 (1971). Yet Ohio's filing deadline prevents persons who wish to be independent candidates from entering the significant political arena established in the State by a Presidential election campaign - and creating new political coalitions of Ohio voters - at any time after mid-to-late March. 11 At this point developments in campaigns for the major-party nominations have only begun, and the major parties will not adopt their nominees and platforms for another five months. Candidates and supporters within the major parties thus have the political advantage of continued flexibility; for independents, the inflexibility imposed by the March filing deadline is a correlative disadvantage because of the competitive nature of the electoral process.
-- John Paul Stevens
Dissenting opinion
The
dissenting opinion
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Dissenting opinions are norm ...
of the court pointed to Ohio's deadline for partisan candidates, which was the same as that of independent candidates:
Should a candidate decide to seek the nomination of a political party participating in Ohio's primary election by capturing delegate votes for the party's national convention, the candidate must file a declaration of candidacy and a nominating petition bearing signatures from 1,000 members of the party; the filing must occur no later than the 75th day before the first Tuesday after the first Monday in June of the election year... If a candidate chooses to run as a nonparty candidate, he must file, by the same date as a party candidate participating in the primary, a statement of candidacy and a nominating petition bearing the signatures of 5,000 qualified voters.
-- William H. Rehnquist
The dissent additionally stated that states had discretion in allowing or refusing to allow national candidates on their ballots. In light of a sensible system of petitioning, the Supreme Court should not interfere:
Today the Court holds that the filing deadline for nonparty candidates in this statutory scheme violated the First Amendment rights of 1980 Presidential hopeful John Anderson and Anderson's supporters. Certainly, absent a court injunction ordering that his name be placed on the ballot, Anderson and his supporters would have been injured by Ohio's ballot access requirements; by failing to comply with the filing deadline for nonparty candidates Anderson would have been excluded from Ohio's 1980 general election ballot. But the Constitution does not require that a State allow any particular Presidential candidate to be on its ballot, and so long as the Ohio ballot access laws are rational and allow nonparty candidates reasonable access to the general election ballot, this Court should not interfere with Ohio's exercise of its Art. II, 1, cl. 2, power.
-- William H. Rehnquist
See also
* ''
McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission
''McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission'', 514 U.S. 334 (1995), is a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that an Ohio statute prohibiting anonymous campaign literature is unconstitutional because it violates the First Amend ...
'' (1995)
*
List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 460
This is a list of all the United States Supreme Court cases from volume 460 of the ''United States Reports
The ''United States Reports'' () are the official record ( law reports) of the Supreme Court of the United States. They include rulings, ...
References
Further reading
*
External links
*
{{USElectionCourt
United States Supreme Court cases
United States Supreme Court cases of the Burger Court
United States freedom of association case law
United States equal protection case law
1983 in United States case law
1980 United States presidential election
United States elections case law
United States presidential elections in Ohio
1980 Ohio elections