Court Curbs States’ Closed-Primary Laws : Parties May Let Independents Help Pick Candidates, Justices Rule

WASHINGTON — A state may not bar a political party from encouraging independents to vote in its primary elections, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.

In a blow to the tradition of “closed” party primaries, the justices said on a 5-4 vote that a party’s right to govern its own affairs outweighs a state’s interest in controlling its elections.

“We conclude that the state’s enforcement, under these circumstances, of its closed primary system burdens the First Amendment rights of the party,” Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote for the court.

Connecticut Law Voided

The ruling strikes down a 1955 Connecticut law that limited voting in its primaries to those who had registered as party members. Twenty others states, including California, have similar laws.

However, the circumstances cited by Marshall refer to the move by Connecticut Republicans--a minority in the state--to broaden party support by encouraging “unaffiliated” voters to cast ballots in its primaries. In 1984, the Republican Party won a District Court ruling striking down the state law, and last year an appeals court upheld that decision.

Before the high court, Connecticut officials argued that the closed-primary law was needed to “protect the integrity” of the two-party system. But the court majority concluded that the state’s claim in the case (Tashjian vs. Republican Party of Connecticut, 85-766) was “insubstantial.”

Free to Join Party

Justices John Paul Stevens and Antonin Scalia filed dissents, joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Scalia pointed out that independent voters are free to join the party until the day before the election and complained that the court’s ruling creates “a process that permits the members’ votes to be diluted--and perhaps even absolutely outnumbered--by the votes of outsiders.”

In a second ruling concerning elections, the high court upheld a Washington state law that requires minor party candidates to get at least 1% of the vote in the primary in order to appear on the general election ballot.

State officials were concerned about “the general election ballot becoming cluttered with minor-party candidates,” Justice Byron R. White wrote for the 7-2 majority, and they were “clearly entitled to raise the ante for ballot access, to simplify the general election ballot and to avoid the possibility of unrestrained factionalism.” Justices William J. Brennan Jr. and Marshall dissented in the case (Munro vs. Socialist Workers Party, 85-656).

Attorneys who had read the decision in the Connecticut case said it did not appear to threaten all closed-primary laws, which the justices have upheld in the past when independent voters filed suit against them.

“We have a similar statute that requires you to affiliate in advance to vote in the primary,” California Deputy Atty. Gen. Geoffrey Graybill said, “but neither of our major parties has challenged it.”

Curbs on Party Officials

However, Wednesday’s decision--in which the court said, in effect, that a state may not tell a party how to run its affairs--could spell trouble for another state election law. At the turn of the century, the California Legislature decreed that candidates should be nominated through party primaries, not by the decisions of party officials. At the same time, party central committees were prohibited from endorsing candidates before the primaries.

Two years ago, leaders of the county central committees in San Francisco and Los Angeles challenged that prohibition in court and, in February, won a ruling from the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals striking down those parts of the law. In September, state officials appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court, which has yet to take action on it.

In a third ruling Wednesday, the high court refused to broaden the Miranda ruling to exclude confessions from those suffering from “mental illness.” The Colorado Supreme Court had thrown out the confession of a man who, after hearing “a voice from God,” told a Denver police officer about a murder he had committed.

Rehnquist wrote for the court that the confession could be used because it did not come from “coercive political conduct. The police did nothing wrong here,” he said. Brennan and Marshall dissented in the case (Colorado vs. Connelly, 85-660).