In two cases based on the 2023 legislative mandate that judicial candidates disclose certain information on their ballot application, the Texas Supreme Court has held that this requirement does not authorize a primary election official to bar a candidate from the ballot for a failure to comply.
In re Brittanye Morris (No. 24-0007; January 10, 2024) arose from the Harris County Democratic Party chair’s decision to withdraw acceptance of Morris’s ballot application based on her inadvertently putting her driver’s license number on the application instead of her State Bar number (a mistake she quickly remedied). The mistake had been drawn to the chair’s attention by Morris’s opponent. The court of appeals denied mandamus and injunctive relief. Morris filed a petition for writ of mandamus with SCOTX.
The Court granted the petition. In a per curiam opinion, the Court held that § 141.0311, which requires disclosure of specified information on the ballot application (including a State Bar number), was not incorporated into Chapter 172, Election Code, which authorizes a party chair to reject a ballot application for non-compliance as to form, content, and procedure (§ 172.02222). Further, § 141.0311 does not include a provision barring a candidate from the ballot as a consequence for non-compliance but instead provides that making a false statement on the application constitutes “professional misconduct subject to sanctions or censure by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct or the state bar, as applicable.”
The statute in question, as you know, was part of HB 2384, the judicial education and ballot transparency legislation TCJL advocated for last session. SCOTX’s decision is undoubtedly correct; the bill was never intended to restrict ballot access, as we repeatedly stated during the session (if we had wanted to try that, we would have, but that wasn’t—and isn’t—the point). We are particularly gratified that the Court recognized that “[t]he statute seeks to inform about the candidate’s background, but does not add to the constitutional and statutory qualifications to hold office.” During the session, some opponents of our efforts to improve the judiciary argued that requiring ballot application disclosures was unconstitutional because it added “constitutional and statutory qualifications to hold office.” Well, that was a load of you know what then, and the Court certainly saw it as such.
The second case, In re Peter Kelly (No. 24-0011; January 10, 2024) was mooted by the Morris decision. This case arose from First Court of Appeals Justice Peter Kelly’s effort to knock his opponent off the Democratic Party primary ballot in Harris County.
