1. Six Democratic presidential candidates to debate tonight in Iowa
2. Ninth Circuit rules public-sector unions don’t have to refund fees paid prior to Janus ruling
3. Federal judge strikes down South Dakota law regarding ballot measure signature collection

Six Democratic presidential candidates to debate tonight in Iowa

Six Democratic presidential candidates—Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, Tom Steyer, and Elizabeth Warren—will participate in the party’s seventh primary debate today—Jan. 14. The event will take place at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, at 9 p.m. ET. 

CNN and The Des Moines Register are hosting the event with Wolf Blitzer, Abby Phillip, and Brianne Pfannenstiel moderating. 

Candidates met both a polling and fundraising threshold to qualify. To meet the polling criteria, each candidate received 5% support or more in at least four national or early state polls or 7% support or more in at least two single state polls. The four early states are Iowa (Feb. 3), New Hampshire (Feb. 11), Nevada (Feb. 22), and South Carolina (Feb. 29). 

Candidates also met a fundraising threshold of 225,000 unique donors and a minimum of 1,000 donors in at least 20 states. Steyer qualified on Jan. 9 after the release of two Fox News polls of voters in South Carolina and Nevada showed him at 15% and 12% in those states, respectively. 

Seven candidates participated in the party’s previous debate Dec. 19. Andrew Yang is the only candidate from that debate who did not qualify for this event. Yang met the fundraising criteria but only had one poll qualify towards the polling threshold.

The next Democratic presidential debate will take place in New Hampshire on Feb. 7, four days after the Iowa caucuses. And click here to subscribe to our Daily Presidential News Briefing. You'll receive a debate summary straight to your inbox tomorrow morning.

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Ninth Circuit rules public-sector unions don’t have to refund fees paid prior to Janus ruling 

Not only do I write the Brew, but I’m also a subscriber to all of Ballotpedia’s other newsletters. I was reading the latest issue of Union Station and found the recently-covered news item intriguing.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled Dec. 26 that public-sector unions cannot be required to refund fees paid before the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2018 decision in Janus v. AFSCME. 

As a reminder, the Supreme Court decided 5-4 on June 27, 2018, that public-sector unions cannot require non-member employees to pay agency fees covering the costs of non-political union activities. This ruling overturned the precedent established in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education in 1977, where the Court determined that non-union public employees could be required to pay labor union fees for collective bargaining, contract administration, and grievance adjustment purposes.

Three Washington state employees filed a class-action lawsuit on March 15, 2018, in federal District Court challenging the constitutionality of compulsory fee collection. They sought refunds of "all agency fees that were unlawfully collected from Plaintiffs and their fellow class members." After the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Janus, the district court granted the union’s request to have the lawsuit dismissed.

A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit unanimously affirmed the district court's decision. That ruling stated, "Throughout the country, public sector employees brought claims for monetary relief against the unions pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Many unions asserted a good faith defense in response. Joining a growing consensus, the district court here ruled in favor of the union. We affirm and hold that private parties may invoke an affirmative defense of good faith to retrospective monetary liability under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, where they acted in direct reliance on then-binding Supreme Court precedent and presumptively-valid state law." 

Judge Jacqueline Nguyen wrote the Ninth Circuit’s opinion, which was joined by Judges Ronald Gould and Gregory Presnell. Nguyen was appointed to the court by President Barack Obama (D). Gould and Presnell were appointed by President Bill Clinton (D).

You can read more stories like this about court decisions, legislation, and national trends regarding public-sector union policy in our free weekly newsletter, "Union Station."

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Federal judge strikes down South Dakota law regarding ballot measure signature collection

U.S. District Judge Charles Kornmann ruled Friday—Jan. 10—that a South Dakota law regarding ballot measure signature collection violated the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. 

South Dakota House Bill 1094 was passed in 2019 and was designed to require:

• paid petition circulators register with the secretary of state and provide certain information;

• paid petition circulators pay a registration fee of $20;

• all petitioners wear a badge identifying the committee and ballot measure for which they are collecting signatures and their paid or volunteer status; and

• other changes to the state’s rules on petition circulators.

South Dakota’s State Senate approved House Bill 1094 by a 19-13 vote on March 4, 2019. All votes in favor were by Republicans and nine Republicans joined 4 Democrats in opposition. The state House approved the measure 51-14 with all votes in favor by Republicans and four Republicans joining 10 Democrats opposed. Gov. Kristi Noem (R) signed the legislation on March 21, 2019.

In his ruling, Kornmann wrote that the bill’s definition of a petition circulator was broad enough to apply to anyone who publicly advocated for the signing of an initiative petition and that the disclosure requirements were discriminatory against initiative petition supports and restricted free speech. Kornmann also ruled that all of the provisions of the bill were intimately connected such that none of the other provisions could be severed from the disclosure requirements he ruled unconstitutional.

Kornmann is a federal judge on senior status with the United States District Court for the District of South Dakota. He was appointed to the court by President Clinton (D) in 1995.

House Bill 1094 was one of 229 legislative proposals Ballotpedia tracked regarding ballot initiatives, veto referendums, referrals, local ballot measures, and recall in 34 states in 2019. Thirty-eight such proposals were approved in 16 states—Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, and Utah. 

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