Federal Judge Dismisses Lawsuit Challenging Tennessee’s “Bona Fide” Primary Voting Law
A federal judge today dismissed a lawsuit from a voting rights group and individual residents challenging a Tennessee statute requiring voters to be “bona fide” members of a political party in order to cast a ballot in the state’s open primary elections or otherwise face a threat of criminal prosecution.
The League of Women Voters of Tennessee and a bipartisan group of voters alleged that the law — which does not explain how one can become a “bona fide” political party member — is unconstitutionally vague and was enacted to intimidate and suppress voters.
The legal challenge underscored that the law is especially confusing since Tennessee voters do not register with a particular party under the state’s open primary system. Rather, the state permits any voter to cast a primary ballot associated with the party of their choice on Election Day.
In today’s ruling tossing out the case, Trump-appointed Judge Eli Richardson concluded that the plaintiffs lack standing to sue. Richardson reached a similar conclusion in a March 2024 order dismissing an earlier version of the case, which prompted the plaintiffs to re-file their suit in May.
Richardson also held today that even if the plaintiffs did have standing to sue, the defendants in the case, including Tennessee’s Republican secretary of state and attorney general, are entitled to “sovereign immunity” — a legal doctrine that shields government officials from lawsuits without their consent.
Republican lawmakers and state officials claimed the law was passed to deter what is known as “crossover voting” — where a voter who supports a certain political party casts a ballot in the primary election of a different party.
The defendants in the case maintained that the practice of crossover voting allows members of one party to “sabotage another party’s primary by voting for a candidate that they believe will lose to their own party’s candidate in the general election.”
But the suit refuted the notion that the law is merely a way to stop crossover voting, instead explaining how the statute serves to deter some voters from participating in the state’s primaries altogether.
One of the suit’s plaintiffs, James Palmer, said the law discouraged him from voting in the March 2024 primary. He supported Democratic candidates via yard signs, but was afraid to then cast a ballot in the Republican primary upon hearing about the potential for prosecution under the law.