A federal judge pressed New Jersey officials Tuesday to explain how they stopped enforcing a state election law requiring nominating petition circulators to be state residents as he considered whether a Libertarian candidate should appear on the ballot in one of the nation’s most competitive congressional races.
U.S. District Judge Zahid Quraishi said he would rule by August 31 on Lana Leguía’s bid to join Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield), Democratic challenger Rebecca Bennett and independent candidate Seamus Patrick O’Toole on the November ballot in New Jersey’s 7th district.
The decision could carry consequences beyond Leguía’s candidacy. Kean is seeking a third term against Bennett, a former Navy helicopter pilot, in a race expected to help determine which party controls the House.
Early in Tuesday’s hearing, Quraishi questioned Deputy Attorney General Nathaniel Rubin about how Lt. Gov. Dale Caldwell, in his capacity as Secretary of State, could decline to enforce an existing law requiring independent and third-party petition circulators to be eligible New Jersey voters.
State election officials stopped enforcing the residency requirement approximately five years ago, following a federal court decision involving a different petition law. But the Legislature never repealed the provision at issue in Leguía’s case, and no court had struck it down.
Quraishi acknowledged the legal questions surrounding the state’s decision but also focused on what candidates had been told and how election officials had operated in practice.
“We live in a world of practicality,” Quraishi said.
Leguía testified that she was candid about using out-of-state petition circulators and did not attempt to conceal where they lived. Her attorneys contend that she relied on the state’s longstanding practice and had no reason to believe her petitions would be rejected after election officials had stopped enforcing the residency requirement.
Joe Fortunato, one of Leguía’s attorneys, called activist Geoff Sebesta and Barry Bender, the elections chairman of the New Jersey Green Party, to testify about the difficulties independent and third-party candidates face when trying to qualify for the ballot.
They described the challenge of finding people willing and able to collect hundreds of valid signatures. Bender contrasted those difficulties with the extensive organizations available to Republican and Democratic candidates.
Republicans, however, presented evidence suggesting that Leguía’s own party knew what the law required.
Jason Sena, an attorney representing the New Jersey Republican State Committee, introduced screenshots showing that the New Jersey Libertarian Party’s website had listed the requirement that petition circulators be state residents earlier this year.
Sena then produced an archived copy of the page retrieved through the Wayback Machine, an internet archive that preserves earlier versions of websites. The archived page showed that the residency requirement was removed from the Libertarian Party’s website on June 8 — the same day the challenge to Leguía’s candidacy was filed.
Assemblyman Al Barlas (R-Cedar Grove), the Essex County Republican chairman, testified that he did not know the secretary of state had stopped enforcing the law. Barlas said the Division of Elections checked the eligibility of his circulators when he filed petitions for the Assembly in 2023.
Barlas argued that requiring circulators to live in New Jersey is sound public policy, particularly because independent and third-party congressional candidates need substantially fewer signatures than major-party candidates seeking nomination in a primary.
“You should have a vested interest in New Jersey,” Barlas said.
Quraishi asked Barlas about his view of the decision to skip the statute.
“What do I think about the attorney general’s office ignoring state law?” he stated. “Well, I don’t know what we’re doing here anymore.”
Quraishi told Rubin to provide certifications from the Division of Elections.
The hearing followed nearly three months of litigation over Leguía’s nominating petitions.
Leguía submitted 759 signatures before the June 2 filing deadline, and election officials accepted 755. Independent and third-party congressional candidates need 250 valid signatures to qualify for the general-election ballot.
But three New York residents collected 670 of Leguía’s signatures. Without them, she would have just 85 valid signatures — 165 short of the requirement.
The Republican State Committee challenged her petitions, arguing that the signatures collected by the New York circulators must be rejected under a state law requiring circulators to be eligible New Jersey voters. Eligibility includes residency, although circulators do not need to be registered voters.
Administrative Law Judge William Courtney agreed that the signatures should be invalidated but said he lacked the authority to decide Leguía’s constitutional challenge to the residency requirement.
Caldwell overruled Courtney and restored Leguía to the ballot. He concluded that the reasoning of a 2021 federal court decision involving major-party primary petitions should extend to independent and third-party candidates seeking direct access to the general-election ballot.
In that case, Arsenault v. Way, U.S. District Judge Peter Sheridan found that New Jersey could not prohibit out-of-state circulators from collecting signatures for a presidential candidate seeking a place on a major-party primary ballot.
But Arsenault involved a different statute. Sheridan did not invalidate the separate residency requirement governing independent and third-party candidates, and that law was not before him.
State election officials nevertheless treated the decision as grounds to stop enforcing residency requirements for circulators in both primary and general elections.
The Appellate Division later ruled that Caldwell could not disregard the general-election law without evidence that he had received and relied upon legal advice from the attorney general. The court ordered Leguía removed from the ballot but did not decide whether the residency requirement was constitutional.
The New Jersey Supreme Court declined to hear Leguía’s appeal, prompting her to sue Caldwell in federal court.
Leguía argues that enforcing the requirement against her after the filing deadline would unfairly punish her for following a practice the state had accepted for years. Her attorneys say she could have used New Jersey circulators and collected enough signatures if election officials had warned candidates that the statutory requirement would be enforced again.
Republicans contend that the law never changed and that Leguía and the Libertarian Party were responsible for complying with it. They also point to her previous campaigns as evidence that the residency requirement does not prevent minor-party candidates from reaching the ballot.
Leguía qualified for the ballot with in-state circulators when she ran for Congress as a Libertarian in 2024 and for the State Assembly in the 24th legislative district in 2025.
Her presence in this year’s race could become significant if the contest between Kean and Bennett is close. Leguía received 3,784 votes in 2024, when Kean defeated Democratic nominee Sue Altman by 23,306 votes.
Quraishi’s ruling is expected less than three weeks before county clerks are scheduled to begin mailing vote-by-mail ballots on September 19. An appeal could further compress the timetable for finalizing and printing ballots in the 7th district.