Green Party Asks Supreme Court to Keep Its Candidates on Nevada Ballot

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein speaks at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., in this file photo. Christopher Dolan/The Citizens' Voice via AP

The Nevada Green Party is petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to keep its candidates on the state ballot for the Nov. 5 election.

The emergency application was filed on Sept. 13 after the Nevada Supreme Court overturned a lower court ruling placing Green Party candidates on the ballot.

The Nevada Supreme Court ruled 5–2 on Sept. 6 that the party’s candidates could not appear on the ballot because they used the wrong form when gathering ballot-access signatures from the public. The ruling followed the Nevada State Democratic Party’s challenge of signatures that would have permitted Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein to appear on the ballot.

The Nevada State Democratic Party sued in June to block the Green Party from the ballot, contesting the validity of petition signatures because of the form, which was for initiatives and referendums and not for a minor party to gain ballot access.

The Green Party argued that refusing its ballot access would violate its federal due process and equal protection rights under the U.S. Constitution. On Aug. 12, a state district court in Carson City denied the Democrats’ claims on state law grounds without ruling on the federal issues.

A divided Nevada Supreme Court reversed that ruling on Sept. 6, finding that the office of Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar had instructed the Nevada Green Party to use the wrong form. Although the court determined that the incident was “an unfortunate mistake,” that mistake did not rise to the level of a federal constitutional violation.

The party’s application, presented by Jay Alan Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice, was directed to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan. Kagan directed Nevada to file a reply by 4 p.m. on Sept. 17.

“Given the timing of the lower court’s actions, emergency relief in this Court is the only relief available that prevents an ongoing and irreparable harm to [the Nevada Green Party’s] exercise of one of Americans’ most sacred rights,” the application stated.

Nevada is a hotly contested battleground state in the current presidential election, and the presence of Green Party candidate Jill Stein on the ballot could influence the presidential election result in the state.

In 2020, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden, a Democrat, prevailed over President Donald Trump, a Republican, in Nevada by 33,596 votes, a margin of 2.4 percent. In 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton beat Trump by 27,202 votes, also a margin of 2.4 percent.