Court to hear RFK Jr.'s appeal to remove his candidate's name from Wisconsin ballot

MADISON — A Wisconsin appeals court on Wednesday agreed to review the case of independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as he seeks to have his name removed from the state’s presidential ballot — with an expedited briefing schedule as time runs out for clerks to send out mail-in ballots before the Nov. 5 election.

Kennedy filed a lawsuit against the Wisconsin Elections Commission earlier this month in Dane County, arguing that independent candidates are being treated unfairly because they operate under different deadlines than party-aligned candidates for ballot access.

Judges Mark Gundrum, Lisa Neubauer and Maria Lazar of the state’s 2nd District Court of Appeal granted Kennedy permission to appeal Dane County Circuit Judge Stephen Ehlke’s decision Monday denying the candidate’s request to be removed from the ballot.

The appeals court ordered Kennedy to file a brief by 11 a.m. Thursday and required a response from the WEC by 11 a.m. Friday. Kennedy would then be allowed to file a response by 4 p.m. Friday.

“Under the First Amendment, this has compelled him not only to speak, but to associate himself with a cause he does not want to participate in,” Kennedy’s lawyers wrote of WEC in the original complaint. “In doing so, Kennedy’s rights have been violated. He has not been treated fairly or equally with other presidential candidates who have run and have since sought to withdraw.”

Party-affiliated candidates had until 5 p.m. on September 3 to certify their candidacy, according to the Electoral Commission’s guidelines, while independent candidates had until 5 p.m. on August 6. Kennedy ended his campaign on August 23.

Kennedy’s lawsuit comes just a week after the state Board of Elections rejected a request by his campaign to be removed from the ballot after he dropped out of the presidential race last month and endorsed former President Donald Trump.

Lawyers for Kennedy, who ran as an independent, and several Republican members of the then-elections commission argued that Kennedy should be able to remove his name from the ballot before the commission officially sets the ballot. But Wisconsin law says that anyone who files a candidacy paper and qualifies to be on the ballot — which Kennedy did — cannot opt out of the nomination. The only exception to that provision is “in the event of the person’s death,” according to the law.

The commission voted 5-1 to keep Kennedy on the ballot after Democratic commissioners blocked their Republican counterparts from removing him in an earlier vote.

“The only way he’s not going to be on the ballot is if he dies, which I suspect he has no intention of doing,” WEC Chairwoman Ann Jacobs, a Democrat, said last week. “The law is absolutely clear on that.”

Republicans have pushed to have Kennedy’s name removed from ballots in key states, fearing his presence would draw votes away from Trump.

Kennedy’s lawyers focused their argument on the different dates by which party-affiliated candidates and independent candidates must certify their statements of candidacy. President Joe Biden, they noted, withdrew from the race on July 21, ahead of the party’s Sept. 3 deadline in Wisconsin.

The filing claims that Kennedy and Biden were both “longtime politicians” and said that “both are dynamic speakers and both have extensive experience in government — each having served for decades in Congress.” Kennedy, however, never served in Congress.

In Wisconsin, more Republicans than Democrats supported Kennedy, according to poll data from Marquette University Law School.

Without any changes, there will be eight presidential candidates in Wisconsin in November, including Green Party candidate Jill Stein and independent candidate Cornel West.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Lawrence Andrea contributed to this article.

You can contact Jessie Opoien at [email protected].