The Idaho Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit Attorney General Raúl Labrador filed over an upcoming ballot initiative on Idaho’s closed primary system, concluding that it was too early to rule on the measure’s constitutionality.
The justices’ unanimous decision left the door open for Labrador to file another lawsuit in a lower court. The justices did not resolve the ethical question they raised on whether Labrador has a conflict of interest in suing a state official while his office also represents him in the same lawsuit.
Labrador last month sued Secretary of State Phil McGrane and a coalition of voters hoping to end the Republican Party’s closed primaries and implement ranked choice voting in general elections. Labrador argued that the proposed measure, set to go before voters in November, violated the Idaho Constitution, and he accused the organizers of misleading voters, rendering the tens of thousands of signatures they gathered void.
The court Tuesday delivered an opinion that dismissed both of Labrador’s arguments on procedural grounds. Justice Robyn M. Brody said the constitutional question would not be ready to review “unless and until” the ballot measure is approved in November.
She also said the Supreme Court was not the right venue to explore whether any signatures were improperly collected and that such a question must first be answered in lower courts. State law doesn’t give the secretary of state authority to determine whether signatures on an initiative petition are fraudulently collected, she said in the decision.
“The attorney general’s petition fundamentally misapprehends the role of this court under the Idaho Constitution and the role of the secretary of state under the initiative laws enacted by the Idaho Legislature,” Brody wrote.
The court’s ruling still allows Labrador to challenge the collected signatures in a lower court, or to challenge the initiative’s constitutionality after voters choose to make it law.
Volunteers for the coalition, Idahoans for Open Primaries, gathered nearly 75,000 verified signatures for a citizen-led initiative last month to place the measure on the general election ballot. Labrador accused the organizers of “deceptive practices” by focusing intentionally on eliminating the state’s closed primaries and not ranked choice voting.
The initiative’s organizers have denied Labrador’s allegations on misleading voters who signed the petition. Luke Mayville, the coalition’s spokesperson, called them a “political stunt.”
