[EL] CA's law requiring presidential candidates to disclose tax returns

[Nate Persily]

Here is the text of the bill that  was signed into law.

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200SB27

It applies to presidential and gubernatorial primaries. For reasons Rick
mentions, the constitutional issues are somewhat different for the
different offices.   The regulation of presidential primaries implicates
both the candidates’ and the parties’ (state and national) constitutional
rights. Unless I read it wrong, the actual implications for the 2020
Republican primary are  largely symbolic — that is, whether Trump’s name
appears on the primary ballot in the state. Assuming the national
Republican Party disagrees with this, they can do what the Democrats did
with respect to Michigan and Florida in 2008: presumptively not include
delegates from California (or more likely, simply have some procedure that
ratifies a Trump-slate of delegates to the convention).  (If Trump had a
serious challenger, it might be less purely symbolic  but the national
party’s remedy would be the same and the state party might also have some
options.)

Leaving aside the implications for 2020, there are different claims (and
applicable precedent) for the candidates, state party, and national party.
I review some of them in this article:
Candidates v. Parties: The Constitutional Constraints on Primary Ballot
Access Laws, 88 Georgetown Law Journal2181 (2001)



On Tue, Jul 30, 2019 at 6:06 PM Pildes, Rick <rick.pildes at nyu.edu> wrote:

> I just posted this to the Election Law blog:
>
>
> The Central Issue in the Constitutional Challenge to CA’s New Law Denying
> Ballot Access to Presidential Candidates Unless They Disclose Their Tax
> Returns <https://electionlawblog.org/?p=106702>
>
> Posted on July 30, 2019 2:54 pm <https://electionlawblog.org/?p=106702> by
> Richard Pildes <https://electionlawblog.org/?author=7>
>
> The Supreme Court has long recognized that laws regulating candidate
> access to the ballot implicate the First Amendment and associational rights
> of *voters. *As a result, the Court has held unconstitutional various
> regulations that impose “undue burdens” on ballot access, including in the
> context of presidential primaries.
>
> Indeed, in the one case perhaps closest on point to this new California
> law, the Supreme Court — in an opinion by Justice Stevens — has held that
> when such laws involve the presidential election process, the courts must
> be particularly careful to scrutinize such laws closely. The reasons,
> according to Justice Stevens for the Court in * Anderson v. Celebrezze, *460
> US 780 (1983), are these:
>
> Furthermore, in the context of a Presidential election, state-imposed
> restrictions implicate a uniquely important national interest. For the
> President and the Vice President of the United States are the only elected
> officials who represent all the voters in the Nation. Moreover, the impact
> of the votes cast in each State is affected by the votes cast for the
> various candidates in other States. Thus in a Presidential election a
> State’s enforcement of more stringent ballot access requirements, including
> filing deadlines, has an impact beyond its own borders.Similarly, the State
> has a less important interest in regulating Presidential elections than
> statewide or local elections, because the outcome of the former will be
> largely determined by voters beyond the State’s boundaries. This Court,
> striking down a state statute unduly restricting the choices made by a
> major party’s Presidential nominating convention, observed that such
> conventions serve “the pervasive national interest in the selection of
> candidates for national office, and this national interest is greater than
> any interest of an individual State.” *Cousins* v. *Wigoda,* 419 U. S.
> 477, 490 (1975)
> <https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=14828795262297953140&hl=en&as_sdt=6,33&as_vis=1>.
>
>
> There are no bright-line doctrinal rules here. The Court will weigh the
> “character and magnitude” of the burden the law imposes against CA’s
> legitimate justifications for it. But that process of analysis will include
> significant consideration of the issues that *Anderson *identified in
> striking down the Ohio ballot access law at issue there.
>
>
>
>
>
> Best,
>
> Rick
>
> <https://www.google.com/maps/search/40+Washington+Square+So.+%0D%0A+NYC,+NY+10014?entry=gmail&source=g>
>
>
>
> Richard H. Pildes
>
> Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law
>
> NYU School of Law
>
> 40 Washington Square So.
> <https://www.google.com/maps/search/40+Washington+Square+So.+%0D%0A+NYC,+NY+10014?entry=gmail&source=g>
>
> NYC, NY 10014
> <https://www.google.com/maps/search/40+Washington+Square+So.+%0D%0A+NYC,+NY+10014?entry=gmail&source=g>
>
> 212 998-6377
>
>
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-- 

----------------

Nate Persily

James B. McClatchy Professor of Law
Stanford Law School
559 Nathan Abbott Way
Stanford, CA 94305-8610
(917) 570-3223
npersily at stanford.edu

www.persily.com
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