A New Jersey appellate court has ordered that Libertarian congressional candidate Lana Leguía be removed from the state’s general election ballot after finding the secretary of state lacked authority to disregard a state residency requirement for general election petition circulators.
The New Jersey Globe reported July 31 that Appellate Division Judges Jessica Mayer and Robert Vinci vacated an earlier decision by Secretary of State Dale Caldwell that had allowed Leguía to remain on the ballot in New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District. The two judges were responding to an appeal by the New Jersey Republican State Committee, which argued that Caldwell exceeded his authority when he declined to enforce a state requirement that circulators of general election nominating petitions be New Jersey residents.
Leguía, who serves as director of political affairs for the Libertarian Party of New Jersey, initially filed her petitions on June 1 to qualify for the general election ballot. She reportedly submitted 759 signatures, with state election officials accepting 755. Counsel for the New Jersey GOP soon challenged 670 of those signatures on the grounds that they had been collected by three New York residents in violation of state law.
An administrative law judge first agreed with the Republicans, invalidating all but 85 of the signatures and bringing Leguía below the 250 required to qualify. However, that decision was reversed by Caldwell on June 11, who found that Arsenault v. Way, a 2021 federal court ruling invalidating a similar residency requirement for primary petitions, should also extend to independent and third party candidates seeking to appear on the general election ballot.
Republicans then appealed Caldwell’s decision on the grounds that he had effectively declared the general election requirement unconstitutional without the question having been decided by a court. Leguía’s attorney responded that Caldwell had been advised that enforcing the requirement would violate First Amendment and equal protection guarantees. The Department of State separately said the agency had stopped enforcing the residency rules after consulting the attorney general’s office.
However, Deputy Attorney General Steven Gleeson declined during the appeal to confirm that Caldwell had received or relied on advice from the attorney general’s office. He argued instead that Caldwell had reasonably applied the earlier federal ruling and declined to say whether the residency requirement itself was unconstitutional. The appellate judges later pointed to his refusal to confirm the advice in overturning Caldwell’s decision as a justification for their decision.
Writing in an August 1 post on X following the report, Leguía called New Jersey’s current ballot access rules both deliberately complicated and hostile to independent and third party candidates. She also accused Gleeson of acting politically by refusing to confirm whether Caldwell had received the advice.
“How are you not able to confirm one way or the other?” Leguía wrote. “It’s a position clearly based 100% on politics.”
Leguía called the state’s political system “rigged” and accused the people who enforce it of being “corrupt,” adding that people must understand its rules before they can change them. She further suggested that the same problems were even worse in the criminal justice system—a focus of her campaign platform this cycle—writing, “Now, multiply this times 10.”
Leguía also said her campaign would file an emergency application with the New Jersey Supreme Court, with the appellate court giving her until 4:00p ET on August 4 to do so. In an update on X later that day, the campaign announced that the court had accepted its filing and that the parties would next submit arguments. The case before the state Supreme Court remains pending.
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