Murray v. Cuomo

Background

Scherie S. Murray sought the Republican Party nomination for New York’s Fourteenth Congressional District and attempted to qualify for the June 23, 2020 primary ballot by submitting a designating petition. New York law generally required a candidate to collect signatures from registered party members. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Executive Order 202.2 shortened the signature-collection period from April 2 to March 17, 2020, and reduced the required number of signatures from five percent of registered party members to one and one-half percent. The later legislation ratifying the order also set March 20 as the filing deadline and eliminated the opportunity-to-ballot petition for that primary.

Murray submitted a petition containing 906 purportedly valid signatures, exceeding the reduced requirement of 375. After objections, however, the New York City Board of Elections determined that the petition contained no valid signatures. In a prior related state-court proceeding, Murray challenged the signatures and argued that Executive Order 202.2 violated her constitutional rights. The state court rejected her request to be placed on the ballot, finding technical defects in the petition and ruling that the signatures were invalid because they had been collected and witnessed by someone who was not a registered Republican. Murray did not appeal that decision.

Murray then filed this federal case and sought a temporary restraining order requiring the New York State and New York City Boards of Elections to place her name on the ballot and prohibiting them from printing or distributing ballots without her name. The defendants argued that the federal case was barred by the Rooker-Feldman doctrine or claim preclusion and that Murray failed to meet the standard for emergency injunctive relief.

Rooker-Feldman and claim preclusion

The Rooker-Feldman doctrine generally prevents federal district courts from reviewing injuries caused by state-court judgments. The court held that the doctrine did not apply because Murray’s alleged injury was caused by the Board of Elections’ decision invalidating her petition, not by the later state-court judgment. The state court had merely upheld or accepted the Board’s determination; Murray was not asking the federal court to review and reject the state court’s judgment itself.

The court did not decide whether claim preclusion, also called res judicata, barred the federal claims. Claim preclusion can prevent a party from bringing claims that were or could have been raised in an earlier case. The court noted that Murray’s constitutional arguments had been raised in the state proceeding and that the state proceeding ended in an appealable decision. But the federal record did not contain all relevant state-court filings, so the court could not fully determine the preclusive effect. The court stated that it would consider the issue again after a motion and proper adversarial briefing.

Temporary restraining order

The court applied the standards governing preliminary injunctions because a temporary restraining order is a form of emergency injunctive relief. Because Murray sought a mandatory injunction that would change the existing situation by adding her name to the ballot and would provide essentially all of her requested relief, she had to show a clear or substantial likelihood of success. She also had to show irreparable harm and that the public interest favored an injunction.

The court presumed, for purposes of the motion, that Murray had adequately alleged irreparable harm because alleged constitutional violations generally qualify as irreparable injury under Second Circuit precedent. But the court stated that there is no independent constitutional right to be a candidate on a ballot. It also observed that Murray had gathered enough signatures to meet the reduced numerical requirement, but her petition was invalid because of the signature collector’s ineligibility and other defects unaffected by the COVID-19 measures.

Likelihood of success

The court analyzed the ballot-access challenge under the balancing approach associated with Anderson v. Celebrezze and Burdick v. Takushi. It concluded that the challenged restrictions did not severely burden Murray’s rights and therefore did not require the highest level of constitutional review. Under the applicable standard, the restrictions had to be reasonable and nondiscriminatory.

The court found that the shortened collection period and reduced signature requirement were part of a single election-regulation scheme. The measures furthered New York’s important interests in protecting public health during the pandemic and conducting orderly elections. Because New York reduced the signature requirement substantially while shortening the collection period, the court concluded that the restrictions were reasonable and nondiscriminatory. It therefore found that Murray was not clearly or substantially likely to succeed.

The court also found that the requested remedy was too disconnected from the alleged injury. Even if Murray had received additional time to collect signatures, her petition would still have been invalid because the witness was not a registered Republican and because of other unchanged defects. The court therefore could not find that she would likely qualify for the ballot even if she prevailed on her challenge to the COVID-19 measures.

Public interest and disposition

The court concluded that the public interest did not favor emergency relief. It emphasized the government’s interest in limiting person-to-person contact during a serious pandemic, preserving orderly election procedures, and avoiding the burdens of reprinting ballots and disrupting election preparations. The court also noted Murray’s delay in filing the federal case and her failure to appeal the state-court decision.

The court denied Murray’s motion for a temporary restraining order. The opinion did not decide the claim-preclusion issue or enter a final judgment on the underlying constitutional claims.