We were informed by Oliver Hall earlier today that the US District Court for the Western District of Texas has just entered its order granting our motion for summary judgment in part. The order is attached.
The good news: the US District Court for the Western District of Texas declared Texas's ballot access requirements unconstitutional insofar as they require that signatures be collected on paper nomination petitions.
The US District Court for the Western District of Texas has therefore ordered the parties to confer in an attempt to agree upon suitable relief -- suggesting that the Secretary of State will be required to adopt and implement electronic petitioning procedures that enable petitions to be signed online and automatically validated.
This could be a game changer, in that it could obviate the need for hiring paid petition circulators, or at least greatly reduce the need to do so.
Unfortunately, the Court otherwise upheld Texas's requirements.
We were told there are some errors in the opinion that could serve as the basis for possible appeal, but we will have to consider that further and weigh our options. Requiring online petitioning procedures may be enough relief that we should decide to take the partial win -- especially given the difficulty of prevailing on any appeal to the 5th Circuit, which historically has been hostile to ballot access cases.
Oliver Hall pointed out that there is a mistake in the first paragraph, where it says the motion is denied. Page 27 of the order clarifies that the paper-based petitioning procedures are held unconstitutional. We will provide further updates as they come in from Oliver Hall
link to Court Order