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Court Error – Illinois Election Code – 1st & 14th Amendment

By: Derek Hawkins//August 11, 2020//

Court Error – Illinois Election Code – 1st & 14th Amendment

By: Derek Hawkins//August 11, 2020//

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7th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: David M. Gill, et al., v. Charles W. Scholz, et al.,

Case No.: 19-1125

Officials: BRENNAN, SCUDDER, and ST. EVE, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Court Error – Illinois Election Code – 1st & 14th Amendment

In August 2015 David Gill launched his fifth congressional campaign. Unlike his past campaigns, Gill ran as an independent. Although Gill needed 10,754 signatures to qualify for the general ballot, he came up 2,000 short, so the Illinois State Officers Electoral Board (“SOEB”) did not permit him to appear on the general ballot for Illinois’s 13th Congressional District. Gill filed suit, claiming violations of the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

We review a district court’s grant of summary judgment de novo. Turubchuck v. Southern Ill. Asphalt Co., 958 F.3d 541, 548 (7th Cir. 2020) (citing Physicians Healthsource, Inc. v. A-S Medication Solutions, LLC, 950 F.3d 959, 964 (7th Cir. 2020)). Summary judgment is properly awarded if the movant “shows that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” FED R. CIV. P. 56(a). Where, as here, both parties filed cross motions for summary judgment, all reasonable inferences are drawn in favor of the party against whom the motion was granted. See Tripp, 872 F.3d at 862.

Gill’s sole argument on appeal is that the district court erred by relying too heavily on Tripp. The facts in Tripp are similar to those in this case. The plaintiffs were two Green Party members who sought to run for state representative in Illinois’s 115th and 118th representative districts. They raised claims under the First and Fourteenth Amendments when they failed to obtain the number of signatures required by the Illinois Election Code. Id. at 859–60. After an extensive analysis of the plaintiffs’ claims and references to third-party candidates who had made it onto the general ballot in the past, this court in Tripp decided that the Illinois Election Code did not violate the First or Fourteenth Amendments. Id. at 864–72.

The district court erred by automatically concluding that the holding in Tripp controls this case instead of applying the fact-intensive analysis required by the Anderson-Burdick balancing test. The district court’s reliance on Tripp also was problematic because Tripp referenced candidates who were regulated by provisions of the Illinois Election Code different than those at issue in this case.  For these reasons we REVERSE and REMAND for the district court to apply the fact-intensive Anderson-Burdick balancing test.

Reversed and remanded

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Derek A Hawkins is trademark corporate counsel for Harley-Davidson. Hawkins oversees the prosecution and maintenance of the Harley-Davidson’s international trademark portfolio in emerging markets.

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