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Raul Labrador, candidate for attorney general from Idaho, at the Idaho GOP election night watch party at the Grove in Boise, Idaho on November 8, 2022.
IDAHO CAPITAL SUN FILE PHOTO
BOISE – An Idaho judge has denied Idahoans for Open Primaries’ request to have the Idaho Office of the Attorney General pay attorney fees in lawsuits.
Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador had unsuccessfully sued to block the election reform ballot initiative, arguing that the initiative’s organizers had misled some Idaho voters by portraying the initiative as a proposed open primary law , while in fact broader electoral reforms were sought.
Judge Patrick Miller, 4th District of Idaho rejected Labrador’s legal challenge in September. But Miller ruled in a Dec. 18 ruling that he did not believe the attorney general had no reasonable legal or factual basis to pursue his challenge, even though Idahoans for Open Primaries was the predominant party in the lawsuits.
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Miller ordered the Idaho Attorney General’s office to pay $96 in costs incurred by Idahoans for open primaries. But he did not order the office to pay nearly $65,000 in attorney fees sought by Idahoans for open primaries.
“Plaintiff had some evidence,” the judge said in his ruling
Judge Miller wrote that in his ruling Idaho law regarding attorneys’ fees clearly reflects a high legal standard.
“The language of the statute is clear and unambiguous,” he wrote. “The court will award attorneys’ fees to the prevailing party if it finds that the non-prevailing party acted without a reasonable basis in fact or a reasonable basis in law. The bar for a court to conclude that the non-prevailing party acted without a reasonable factual or legal basis is high.”
Although Miller wrote that Idahoans for Open Primaries were the predominant party in the case, he ruled that he could not find that Labrador’s position had no reasonable legal or factual basis.
Labrador had quoted Idaho law banning false statements in petitions in his legal challenge.
“Plaintiff had some evidence, untested in discovery or by cross-examination, that signature gatherers said the initiative would constitute a primary system as it existed prior to 2012,” Miller wrote. “In the abstract, this was a troubling allegation. But the minimal evidence submitted was, in the Court’s opinion, insufficient from which the Court could reasonably conclude that 12,000 signatures could be rejected on this basis.”
Miller also wrote that he disagreed with Labrador’s argument that the Idaho Supreme Court, in a ruling finding that the top four primaries were the best term to describe the proposed initiative’s election system, limited the manner where organizers could discuss this.
“The simple fact that Defendants did not market the initiative in the precise language prescribed for the ballot initiative did not, in the Court’s view, render such statements false,” Miller wrote.
The Idaho attorney general’s office and an attorney for Idahoans for Open Primary Elections could not immediately be reached for comment.
How we got here
Had it passed, the ballot initiative — commonly known as the open primary initiative — would have eliminated Idaho’s closed, partisan primaries.
The new election structure proposed would have sent the top four primary candidates to a general election, where voters could rank the candidates in order of preference, through so-called ‘ranked choice voting’ or ‘instant-runoff voting’.
Supporters of Idaho’s open primary initiative submitted signatures in support of the ballot initiative to the Idaho Secretary of State’s office on July 2, 2024.
KYLE PFANNENSTIEL, IDAHO CAPITAL SUN FILE
Idaho voters broadly rejected the ballot initiativeProposal 1, in the November 5 election, with more than 69% of votes against, according to unofficial election results.
Labrador submitted a legal challenge to block the initiative on August 16, days after the Idaho Supreme Court rejected Labradors previous challenge against the initiative filed July 24.
Miller rejected Labrador District Court challenge on September 5.
The judge will come in November oral arguments heard from attorneys from the Idaho Office of the Attorney General and Idahoans for Open Primaries – on whether the Idaho Attorney Generals’ Office should pay attorney fees.
Idaho capital sun is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Idaho Capital Sun maintains editorial independence. If you have any questions, please contact editor Christina Lords: [email protected].
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