Supreme Court halts open primary system

By Laurie Asseo, Associated Press, 6/27/2000

ASHINGTON - The Supreme Court, in a ruling two dissenting justices said threatens the primary election systems in half the states, threw out California's wide-open primary election process yesterday.

In a 7-2 ruling, the justices said states violate political parties' rights when they let primary voters choose nominees by voting for any candidate, regardless of party affiliation. Two other states have systems similar to California's ''blanket primary.''

Writing for the court, Justice Antonin Scalia said California was ''forcing political parties to associate with those who do not share their beliefs.'' He said that created a ''severe and unnecessary'' burden on parties' political-association rights under the Constitution's First Amendment.

''A single election in which the party nominee is selected by nonparty members could be enough to destroy the party,'' Scalia said.

Alaska and Washington state have similar ''blanket'' primaries in which voters can choose nominees from the candidates of all parties. For example, a voter could choose a Republican candidate for governor, a Democrat for senator and a Libertarian for state attorney general.

The justices said they were not deciding the validity of the more common open primary system used in another 20 states. In such systems, voters choose on election day which party's primary they will vote in, and they can select among that party's candidates only.

But Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in dissent that he believed yesterday's ruling endangered those primary systems too.

''There is surely a danger that open primaries will fare no better against a First Amendment challenge than blanket primaries have,'' Stevens wrote in an opinion joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

California GOP executive director Jon Fleischman said, ''We are very pleased that the United States Supreme Court feels that our members' right of association is paramount.''

California Secretary of State Bill Jones countered, ''I don't know who the parties are afraid of. The vast majority of their members supported this'' blanket primary system.

Nick Tobey, chairman of a California group supporting blanket primaries, said supporters will try again to find a system that will meet court approval.

Scalia said states could hold a nonpartisan blanket primary, in which voters can choose any candidate and the top two vote-getters move on to the general election. Such a system would be similar to Louisiana's voting system.

Under such a voting plan, Scalia said, ''primary voters are not choosing a party's nominee'' and therefore political parties' rights are not harmed.

His opinion was joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony M. Kennedy, David H. Souter, Clarence Thomas, and Stephen G. Breyer.

Four California political parties, the Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, and Peace and Freedom Party, challenged the blanket primary system overwhelmingly approved by voters in 1996. Until then, Californians could vote only in their own party's primary.

A federal judge ruled against the parties, and the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, saying the state had a substantial interest in boosting voter turnout and giving voters a greater choice. The Supreme Court reversed the 9th Circuit Court.

In addition to the 24 states with open or blanket primaries, 13 states have closed primaries that allow only party members to vote in each party's primary. Another 13 states, including Massachusetts, have closed primaries but also let independent voters cast ballots in at least one party's primary.

In other rulings yesterday, the court:

Said juries, not judges, must decide whether someone charged with a hate crime was motivated by bias and therefore can be given a higher maximum sentence. The 5-4 decision overturns a 12-year prison sentence imposed on a white New Jersey man who fired shots into a black family's home. The man is entitled to a jury trial on whether he acted out of racial bias, the justices said.

Ruled that two huge oil companies are entitled to recover about $158 million from the federal government for an offshore oil-and-gas deal that never materialized. The justices voted 8-1 in a breach-of-contract lawsuit against the government by Mobil and Marathon stemming from their ill-fated attempt to explore for oil and gas off North Carolina's Outer Banks.

Agreed to use a voting-rights dispute over a North Carolina congressional district, possibly to try clarifying how to determine when race played too large a role in drawing election districts.

Agreed to decide whether people can be sued for disclosing the contents of telephone calls illegally intercepted and recorded by someone else. Setting the stage for a free-speech ruling with particular significance for news organizations, the court said it will use a Pennsylvania case to judge the validity of federal and state wiretapping laws that impose such liability.