# Timmons v. Twin Cities Area New Party > Supreme Court of the United States · April 28, 1997 · 520 U.S. 351 URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9433444 ## Case - **Full name:** TIMMONS, ACTING DIRECTOR, RAMSEY COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF PROPERTY RECORDS AND REVENUE, Et Al. v. TWIN CITIES AREA NEW PARTY - **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States - **Decided:** April 28, 1997 - **Citations:** 520 U.S. 351; 10 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. S 414; 97 Daily Journal DAR 5336; 65 U.S.L.W. 4273; 97 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 3048; 117 S. Ct. 1364; 137 L. Ed. 2d 589; 1997 U.S. LEXIS 2796 - **Precedential status:** Published - **Opinion:** Dissent by Souter - **Judges:** Rehnquist, Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg - **Cited by:** 576 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/9433444 ## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction) - concluding that while regulation of endorsements implicates political parties’ internal affairs and core associational ae- tivities, regulation of access to election ballot does not - holding that a law that prevented independent parties from listing a major party candidate as their candidate reduced an independent party’s ability to convey support for major candidates, but that the burden was reduced because the “party retains great latitude in its ability… - stating "because the burdens the fusion ban imposes on the party's associational rights are not severe, the State need not narrowly tailor the means it chooses to promote ballot integrity," and "[t]he Constitution does not require that [a state] compromise the policy choices e… - concluding that the burden a Minnesota law FELDMAN V. ARIZ. SEC’Y OF STATE’S OFFICE 51 imposed on a political party’s First and Fourteenth Amendment rights was not severe because the party remained “free to endorse whom it likes, to ally itself with others, to nominate candida… - concluding that the burden a Minnesota law imposed on a political party’s First and Fourteenth Amendment rights was not severe because the party remained “free to endorse whom it likes, to ally itself with others, to nominate candidates for office, and to spread its message to… ## Opinion text Justice Souter, dissenting. I join Parts I and II of Justice Stevens’s dissent, agreeing as I do that none of the concerns advanced by the State suffices to justify the burden of the challenged statutes on respondent’s First Amendment interests. I also agree with Justice Stevens’s view, set out in the first paragraph of Part III, that the State does not assert the interest in preserving “the traditional two-party system” upon which the majority repeatedly relies in upholding Minnesota’s statutes, see, e. g., ante, at 367 (“The Constitution permits the Minnesota Legislature to decide that political stability is best served through a healthy two-party system”). Actually, Minnesota’s statement of the “important regulatory concerns advanced by the State’s ban on ballot fusion,” Brief for Petitioners 40, contains no reference whatsoever to the “two-party system,” nor even any explicit reference to “political stability” generally. See id., at 40-50. To be sure, the State does assert its intention to prevent “party splintering,” id., at 46-50, which may not be separable in the abstract from a desire to preserve political stabil *383 ity. 1 But in fact the State has less comprehensive concerns; the primary dangers posed by what it calls “major-party splintering and factionalism,” id., at 47, are said to be those of “turning] the general election ballot into a forum for venting intraparty squabbles,” ibid., and reducing elections to “a thinly disguised ballot-issue campaign,” id., at 49. Nowhere does the State even intimate that the splintering it wishes to avert might cause or hasten the demise of the two-party system. In these circumstances, neither the State’s point about “splintering,” nor its tentative reference to “political stability” at oral argument, n. 1, infra, may fairly be assimilated to the interest, posited by the Court of preserving the “two-party system.” Accordingly, because I agree with Justice Stevens, ante, at 378, that our election cases restrict our consideration to “the precise interests put forward by the State as justifications for the burden imposed by its rule,” Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U. S. 780, 789 (1983), 2 1 would judge the challenged statutes only on the interests the State has raised in their defense and would hold them unconstitutional. I am, however, unwilling to go the further distance of considering and rejecting the majority’s “preservation of the two-party system” rationale. For while Minnesota has made no such argument before us, I cannot discount the possibility of a forceful one. There is considerable consensus that party loyalty among American voters has declined significantly in the past four decades, see, e. g., W. Crotty, American Parties in Decline 26-34 (2d ed. 1984); Jensen, *384 The Last Party System: Decay of Consensus, 1932-1980, in The Evolution of American Electoral Systems 219-225, (P. Kleppner et al. eds. 1981), and that the overall influence of the parties in the political process has decreased considerably, see, e. g., Cutler, Party Government Under the American Constitution, 134 U. Penn. L. Rev. 25 (1987); Sundquist, Party Decay and the Capacity to Govern, in The Future of American Political Parties: The Challenge of Governance 42-69 (J. Fleishman ed. 1982). In the wake of such studies, it may not be unreasonable to infer that the two-party system is in some jeopardy. See, e. g., Lowi, N. Y. Times, Aug. 23, 1992, Magazine, p. 28 (“ [Historians will undoubtably focus on 1992 as the beginning of the end of America’s two-party system”). Surely the majority is right that States “have a strong interest in the stability of their political systems,” ante, at 366, that is, in preserving a political system capable of governing effectively. If it could be shown that the disappearance of the two-party system would undermine that interest, and that permitting fusion candidacies poses a substantial threat to the two-party scheme, there might well be a sufficient predicate for recognizing the constitutionality of the state action presented by this case. Right now, however, no State has attempted even to make this argument, and I would therefore leave its consideration for another day. Indeed, at oral argument, the State did hesitantly suggest that it “does have an interest, a generalized interest in preserving, in a sense, political stability . ...” Tr. of Oral Arg. 26. See also Edenfield v. Fane, 507 U. S. 761, 768 (1993) (explaining that the midlevel scrutiny that applies in commercial speech eases, which is similar to what we apply here, “[u]nlike rational-basis review ... does not permit us to supplant the precise interests put forward by the State with other suppositions”). --- Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9433444. Public record. Not legal advice.