# Illinois State Board of Elections v. Socialist Workers Party

> Supreme Court of the United States · February 22, 1979 · 440 U.S. 173

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9427462

## Case

- **Full name:** ILLINOIS STATE BOARD OF ELECTIONS v. SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY Et Al.
- **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States
- **Decided:** February 22, 1979
- **Citations:** 440 U.S. 173; 99 S. Ct. 983; 59 L. Ed. 2d 230; 1979 U.S. LEXIS 61
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Stevens
- **Judges:** Marshall, Brennan, Stewart, White, Blacicmun, Powell, Stevens, Blackmun, Burger, Rehnquist
- **Cited by:** 733 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9427462

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- explaining that ballot access restrictions, in particular, burden two fundamental rights: “the right of individuals to associate for the advancement of political beliefs, and the right of qualified voters, regardless of their political persuasion, to cast their votes effectively”
- holding unconstitutional an Illinois statutory requirement that new political parties and independent candidates for elections in po *876 litical subdivisions gather more than the number of signatures required for elections for statewide office
- holding there is no rational reason to require more than 5% signatures in a smaller unit when that number of signatures would exceed 25,000 because the state’s interests were satisfied with 25,000 signatures for a statewide race
- holding that state could not justify discrepancy between high signa- ture requirements for election to local office in Chicago--more than 35,000 qualified voters--and lower requirement for statewide office --25,000 voters
- holding that state could not justify discrepancy between high signature requirements for election to local office in Chicago — more than 35,000 qualified voters — and lower requirement for statewide office — 25,000 voters

## Opinion text

Mr. Justice Stevens,
concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
Placing additional names on a ballot adds to the cost of conducting elections and tends to confuse voters. The State therefore has a valid interest in limiting access to the ballot to serious candidates. If that interest is adequately served by a 25,000-signature requirement in a statewide election, the same interest cannot justify a larger requirement in a smaller election.
Nonetheless, I am not sure that the disparity evidences a violation of the Equal Protection Clause. The constitutional requirement that Illinois govern impartially would be implicated by a rule that discriminates, for example, between Socialists and Republicans or between Catholics and Protestants. But I question whether it has any application to rules prescribing different qualifications for different political offices. Rather than deciding that question, I would simply hold that legislation imposing a significant interference with access to the ballot must rest on a rational predicate. This legislative remnant is without any such support. It is either a product of a malfunction of the legislative process or merely a byproduct of this Court’s decision in Moore v. Ogilvie, 394 U. S. 814 , see post, at 190-191 (Rehnquist, J., concurring in judgment) . In either event, I believe it has deprived appellees of their liberty without the “due process of lawmaking” that the *190 Fourteenth Amendment requires. Cf. Delaware Tribal Business Committee v. Weeks, 430 U. S. 73, 98 (Stevens, J., dissenting).
For these reasons I concur in the Court’s judgment and in Parts I, II, and IV of its opinion.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9427462. Public record. Not legal advice.