Leguía takes NJ-7 ballot fight to federal court after four losses in state court

Libertarian congressional candidate Lana Leguía has moved her fight for a place on the November ballot to federal court after the New Jersey Supreme Court twice refused to hear an appellate ruling that knocked her out of one of the nation’s most closely watched congressional races.

Leguía filed a federal civil-rights lawsuit Thursday against Secretary of State Dale Caldwell, arguing that New Jersey’s requirement that circulators of independent-candidate petitions reside in the state violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

She is seeking an immediate restraining order preventing election officials from invalidating 670 petition signatures collected by three New York residents and an expedited hearing on whether she should be restored to the ballot in the 7th district.

The matter now sits with the state’s most powerful election judge, U.S. District Court Judge Zahid Quraishi, the man who ended the county organization line in primary elections and forever changed the face of New Jersey politics.

Quraishi’s 2024 preliminary injunction in then-U.S. Senate candidate Andy Kim’s lawsuit required county clerks to use office-block ballots instead of placing endorsed candidates in a preferential county line.  His ruling dismantled a system that had helped New Jersey party organizations influence primary elections for generations.

Now, Leguía is asking him to decide another potentially consequential ballot-access question: whether New Jersey may reject otherwise valid signatures solely because the people who collected them live outside the state.

The filing represents Leguía’s last available path back to the ballot following a July 31 Appellate Division decision against her and two rejections by the New Jersey Supreme Court in five days.

Leguía submitted 759 signatures to run as a Libertarian in the 7th district, and the Division of Elections initially accepted 755. Independent and minor-party congressional candidates need 250 valid signatures to qualify.

But three New York residents — Amanda Rusha, Tracie Middleton and Elijah Mohammed — collected 670 of those signatures.  Without them, Leguía has only 85 valid signatures.

Without the state law, New Jersey judges would lack the jurisdiction to subpoena circulators to validate the signatures they collected.

The New Jersey Republican State Committee challenged the petitions under a state law requiring circulators of direct-nomination petitions to be eligible New Jersey voters.  The GOP attorney, Jason Sena, did not allege that the signatures were fraudulent, forged, or collected from people ineligible to sign.

Administrative Law Judge William Courtney initially sided with the Republicans, finding that he lacked jurisdiction to declare the residency requirement unconstitutional.

Caldwell reversed Courtney on June 11 and accepted Leguía’s petitions.  He relied on a 2021 federal case that invalidated a materially similar residency requirement for circulators of major-party primary petitions.

Caldwell, who also serves as lieutenant governor, determined there was no practical constitutional distinction between people circulating primary petitions and those collecting signatures for independent and minor-party candidates.

But Appellate Division Judges Jessica Mayer and Robert Vinci ruled on July 31 that Caldwell exceeded his authority by declining to enforce an unambiguous state law.   The panel said an executive-branch official could not independently disregard a statute on constitutional grounds.

The appellate judges found nothing in Caldwell’s original decision or the state’s filings establishing that he had received and relied upon formal advice from the Attorney General’s Office before refusing to enforce the law.

The Supreme Court declined on August 7 to hear Leguía’s appeal, finding that no sufficient factual record had been developed to decide her constitutional claim.  Chief Justice Stuart Rabner signed a second order on August 11 denying reconsideration.

Leguía’s attorney, Joseph Fortunato, called the state-court result a procedural “Catch-22”: Courtney said he lacked authority to decide the constitutional question; Caldwell ruled in Leguía’s favor, leaving her with nothing adverse to appeal; and the appellate court imposed an expedited briefing schedule focused on Caldwell’s authority rather than the constitutionality of the law.

Her new lawsuit attempts to escape that procedural box by presenting the constitutional issue directly to a federal judge.

Fortunato argues that circulating petitions is core political speech and that New Jersey cannot impose a residency restriction on independent and minor-party candidates after abandoning a nearly identical requirement for primary candidates.

The complaint also alleges an equal-protection violation, contending that the state has created a more burdensome route to the general-election ballot for candidates who do not participate in major-party primaries.

Leguía says she relied on the Department of State’s five-year practice of accepting petitions circulated by nonresidents following the Arsenault decision.  Had the state announced before the June 2 filing deadline that it would resume enforcement, she says, she could have hired New Jersey circulators or collected substitute signatures.

The state’s position has been unusually complicated.  Attorney General Jennifer Davenport’s office defended the constitutionality of the residency law before the Supreme Court while simultaneously asking the justices to restore Leguía, arguing that Caldwell reasonably believed a federal court would strike down the requirement.

Leguía is asking Quraishi to temporarily preserve her ballot position while he considers the merits.  She argues that every day off the ballot diminishes her ability to campaign, organize and raise money — and that no ruling issued after ballots are printed could repair the harm.

The August 31 deadline for preparing official general-election ballots is approaching, and vote-by-mail ballots are scheduled to begin going out September 19.

The 7th district contest features two-term Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr., Democrat Rebecca Bennett, and independent Seamus Patrick O’Toole, who is running under the slogan “Stop Israel’s Genocide.”