MANDEL, GOVERNOR OF MARYLAND, ET AL. v. BRADLEY ET AL.
No. 76-128
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued February 23, 1977—Decided June 16, 1977
432 U.S. 173
Jon T. Brown argued the cause and filed a brief for appellees.
PER CURIAM.
Candidates for statewide or federal office in Maryland may obtain a place on the general election ballot by filing with the State Administrative Board of Election Laws a certificate of candidacy 70 days before a political party‘s primary election and then by winning the primary. Alternatively, under provisions of the Maryland Election Code, a candidate
Appellee Bruce Bradley decided in the spring of 1975 to run as an independent candidate for the United States Senate in 1976, a Presidential election year. Starting in the fall of 1975 Bradley collected signatures on nominating petitions. The requisite number was 51,155. On March 8, 1976, the deadline for filing, Bradley submitted 53,239 signatures and filed a certificate of candidacy for the Senate seat. However, on April 15, 1976, the State Administrative Board of Election Laws determined that only 42,049 of the signatures were valid and denied him a place on the ballot.
Two weeks later, Bradley and the other appellees—petition signers and other voter supporters of Bradley—filed the instant suit, alleging that the procedures mandated by
The court based its holding on our summary affirmance in Tucker v. Salera, 424 U. S. 959 (1976), aff‘g 399 F. Supp. 1258 (ED Pa. 1975). In Salera, a three-judge court declared unconstitutional a Pennsylvania law setting the deadline for an independent candidate to gather signatures to obtain a place on the ballot 244 days before the general election in a Presidential election year. Under the Pennsylvania law, independents had to submit signatures of only 2% of the largest vote cast for any candidate in the preceding statewide general election, but they had to gather the required signatures within a 21-day period prior to the filing deadline. In declaring the Pennsylvania statute invalid, the three-judge court relied, not on the short period for signature gathering (which it thought was valid under Storer v. Brown, 415 U. S. 724 (1974)), but solely on the eаrly deadline for submission of the necessary signatures. The court found that the deadline substantially burdened ballot access of independents by requiring them to obtain the necessary signatures at a time when the election issues were undefined and the voters were apathetic. It also rejected various countervailing state interests that had been urged. This Court summarily affirmed the judgment of the three-judge court in Salera.
The three-judge court in this case viewed this Court‘s summary affirmance in Salera as controlling precedent for the proposition that early filing dates, such as that employed in Maryland, are unconstitutionally burdеnsome on the independent candidate‘s access to the ballot, and therefore decided in favor of the appellees. We noted probable jurisdiction, 429 U. S. 813 (1976).
“When we summarily affirm, without opinion, . . . we affirm the judgment but not necessarily the reasoning by which it was reached. An unexplicated summary affirmance settles the issues fоr the parties, and is not to be read as a renunciation by this Court of doctrines previously announced in our opinions after full argument.” (Footnote omitted.) Fusari v. Steinberg, 419 U. S. 379, 391–392 (1975) (BURGER, C. J., concurring).
Summary affirmances and dismissals for want of a substantial federal question without doubt reject the specific challenges presented in the statеment of jurisdiction and do leave undisturbed the judgment appealed from. They do prevent lower courts from coming to opposite conclusions on the precise issues presented and necessarily decided by those actions. After Salera, for example, other courts were not free to conclude that the Pennsylvania provision invalidated was nevertheless constitutional. Summary actions, however, including Salera, should not be understood as breaking new ground but as applying principles established by prior decisions to the particular facts involved.
Here, the District Court ruled that legally ”Salera decides the issue before us, and as the lаtest expression of the Supreme
This combination of an early filing deadline and thе 21-day limitation on signature gathering is sufficient to distinguish Salera from the case now before us, where there is no limitation on the period within which such signatures must be gathered. In short, Salera did not mandate the result reached by the District Court in this case.
Because of its preoccupation with Salera, the District Court failed to undertake an independent examination of the merits. The appropriate inquiry was set out in Storer v. Brown, supra, at 742:
“[I]n the context of [Maryland] politics, could a reasonably diligent independent candidate be expected to satisfy the [ballot access] requirements, or will it be only rarely that the unaffiliated candidate will succeed in getting on the ballot? Past experienсe will be a helpful, if not always an unerring, guide: it will be one thing if independent candidates have qualified with some regularity and quite a different matter if they have not. We note here that the State mentions only one instance of
an independent candidate‘s qualifying . . . but disclaims having made any comprehensivе survey of the official records that would perhaps reveal the truth of the matter.”
In Storer itself, because the District Court had not applied these standards in adjudicating the constitutional issues before it, we remanded the case “to permit further findings with respect to the extent of the burden imposed on independent candidates.” 415 U. S., at 740. There is no reason here for doing any less. The District Court did not sift through the conflicting evidence and make findings of fact as to the difficulty of obtaining signatures in time to meet the early filing deadline. It did not consider the extent to which other features of the Maryland electoral systеm—such as the unlimited period during which signatures may be collected, or the unrestricted pool of potential petition signers—moderate whatever burden the deadline creates. See Developments in the Law—Elections, 88 Harv. L. Rev. 1111, 1142–1143 (1975). It did not analyze what the past experience of indeрendent candidates for statewide office might indicate about the burden imposed on those seeking ballot access. Instead, the District Court‘s assumption that the filing deadline by itself was per se illegal—as well as the expedited basis upon which the case necessarily was decided3—resulted in a failure to apply the constitutional standards announced in Storer to the statutory provisions here at issue.4
The application of those standards to the evidence in the record is, in the first instance, a task for the District Court. We therefore vacate the judgment, and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.5
It is so ordered.
MR. JUSTICE REHNQUIST took no рart in the consideration or decision of this case.
MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN, concurring.
I join the opinion of the Court but write to emphasize the Court‘s treatment of the rule announced in Hicks v. Miranda, 422 U. S. 332 (1975).
In a dissent from the denial of certiorari in Colorado Springs Amusements, Ltd. v. Rizzo, 428 U. S. 913 (1976), I stated why, in my view, the federal and state courts should give “appropriate, but not necessarily conclusive, weight to our summary dispositions,” id., at 923, rather than be required, as the Court held in Hicks, “to treаt our summary dispositions of appeals as conclusive precedents regarding constitutional challenges to like state statutes or ordinances.” 428 U. S., at 913.
The Court by not relying on our summary affirmance in Tucker v. Salera, 424 U. S. 959 (1976), and Auerbach v. Mandel, 409 U. S. 808 (1972), effectively embraces that view, and vividly exposes the ambiguity inherent in summary dispositions and the nature of the detailed analysis that is
MR. JUSTICE WHITE, with whom MR. JUSTICE POWELL joins, concurring.
Although there are many indications in the District Court‘s opinion that it not only considered Tucker v. Salera, 424 U. S. 959 (1976), controlling, but also independently invalidated the Maryland law on grounds similar to or the same as those employed in Salera—in which event, a remand would be inappropriate—it is fairly arguable that the District Court should unmistakаbly record its opinion as to the validity of the Maryland law. A number of my Brethren are of this view, and I defer to their judgment.
MR. JUSTICE STEVENS, dissenting.
In my judgment the Maryland statute unfairly discriminates against independent candidates in one respect. It requires the independent to make his decision to become a candidate much soоner than a member of a national political party.
A party member is merely required to file a certificate of candidacy 70 days before the primary election. That pro-
In my opinion, the State has not put forward any justification for this disparate treatment. Moreover, it is potentially a matter of great significance. The decision to become a candidate may be prompted by a sudden, unanticipated event of great national or local importance. If such an event should occur on the 71st day before a primary, national party members could make a timely decision to run but independents could not.
The statute should be evenhanded in its impact on the timing of the most important decision any candidate must make. The burdens that аn independent must shoulder are heavy enough without requiring him to make that decision before his most formidable opponents must do so.*
On the basis of the record developed in the District Court, and the full argument on the merits in this Court, I would therefore affirm the judgment.