There’s an update on Rick Perry’s case to get on the Virginia primary ballot. A federal judge in Virginia issued an order Tuesday promising a decision soon and indicating that the court was likely to come down on Perry’s side (h/t Heritage):
there is a strong likelihood that the Court will find the residency requirement for petition circulators to be unconstitutional. The authorities make clear that circulating petitions for candidates is a form of protected speech, and that the Commonwealth has a heavy burden to justify the restriction on speech by showing not only that the limitation achieves a valid state interest but also that the limitation is no broader in scope than necessary to achieve that purpose. As in all strict scrutiny cases, the state has a difficult task to demonstrate the propriety of its limitation on protected speech. For this reason, the Court believes that the plaintiffs have a substantial likelihood of succeeding on the merits, at least on the issue of the validity of the residency requirement.
It now seems most likely Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and Jon Huntsman, could all appear on the Virginia ballot. The Court said that decision would come on Friday at the latest.
In a fun twist, the ACLU filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of Perry and the other Republican candidates, arguing that Virginia’s 10,000-signature requirement to appear on the ballot — which the candidates failed to meet — “reduces the quantity of [political] speech available in Virginia, and directly infringes on the First Amendment rights of candidates, voters, petition circulators, and political parties.”
