This Day in Legal History: The O.K. Corral On October 26, 1881, in Tombstone, in the Arizona Territory, City Marshal Virgil Earp, his brothers Wyatt and Morgan, and Doc Holliday confronted a group of cowboys, including Ike and Billy Clanton and Tom and Frank McLaury, near the O.K. Corral. The gunfight lasted about thirty seconds. Billy Clanton and both McLaurys were killed. Virgil, Morgan, and Holliday were wounded. The legend tends to end there, but the legal story is just as interesting. Days later, Ike Clanton filed murder charges against the Earps and Holliday. Wyatt and Doc were arrested and released on $10,000 bail. Justice of the Peace Wells Spicer then held a month-long preliminary hearing, with dueling witnesses: the county sheriff testified that the cowboys had tried to surrender, while other witnesses, including some considered neutral, testified that the cowboys had drawn first. On November 30, Spicer ruled there wasn’t enough evidence to send the case to trial. He found the lawmen acted within the law, though he criticized Virgil Earp’s judgment in deputizing his brothers and Holliday. The ruling didn’t end the feud. Within months, Virgil was ambushed and Morgan was killed. The significance of October 26, 1881 is that even the most mythologized act of frontier violence ended up before a judge, and what happened next turned on evidence, witnesses, and legal standards. The phrase in today’s opening quote, often attributed to Lincoln, captures the idea that in a democracy, disputes are settled by votes and by law rather than force. That idea is at the center of everything we cover today, as the courts take on an unusually large role in the run-up to the election. The Justice Department has sued Alaska election officials in federal court in Anchorage, asking a judge to block certification of the state’s U.S. Senate race if Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan loses. The President said he ordered the suit: “I’m the one that said, ‘do it.’” The theory is unusual. Another candidate on the ballot is also named Daniel Sullivan, Daniel J. Sullivan, and the department argues his candidacy could confuse voters and violates the National Voter Registration Act. It’s asking the court to bar certification if Sen. Sullivan doesn’t win and certain other conditions are met. The race between Sullivan and Democrat Mary Peltola is close. Legal experts describe the lawsuit as without precedent and facing an uphill battle. Here’s why. First, timing. Courts are generally very reluctant to change election rules close to an election, and this suit was filed 11 days before Election Day, months after the ballot was finalized. If there was a problem with the ballot, the time to raise it was before ballots were printed and mailed. Second, the statute. The National Voter Registration Act governs voter registration, things like registering at the DMV and keeping voter rolls accurate. It doesn’t regulate who can appear on a ballot or how candidates’ names are listed. That’s governed by state law. Third, the remedy. Asking a court to block certification only if one particular candidate loses is unusual, to put it mildly. Courts decide legal questions based on the claims, not on which side wins. And states, not the federal government, run and certify their elections, with Congress, here the Senate, having its own role in judging its members’ elections. Even Alaska’s other Republican senator, Lisa Murkowski, said the department “should never have filed this lawsuit,” and reports indicate the attorney general has acknowledged that blocking certification would be unlikely outside extreme circumstances. Trump administration sues to block Senate race certification in Alaska if Republican loses | Reuters · Alaska Public Media · Votebeat Last week, New Mexico state Judge Francis Mathew ordered Meta to pay $25 billion in the Cambridge Analytica case, and Reuters reports legal experts believe Meta has a strong chance of getting it reduced on appeal. Recall the background we’ve been tracking. In September, a Santa Fe jury found Meta violated New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act more than 43 million times by misleading residents about how their Facebook data was handled. The statute allows up to $5,000 per violation, which put the theoretical maximum at about $219 billion. New Mexico asked for $35 to $40 billion; Meta asked the judge to cap it at $3.45 billion. The judge landed at $25 billion. Meta says it will appeal, that the ruling makes it nearly impossible to do business in New Mexico, and that the suit effectively imposes a “tax on speech.” Here’s why experts think the number is vulnerable. The Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause applies to civil penalties paid to a government, and the Supreme Court held in Timbs v. Indiana that it applies to the states. A fine violates that clause if it is “grossly disproportional” to the offense. Courts also apply due-process limits to very large awards. And New Mexico’s appellate courts will review whether the judge properly exercised his discretion. Meta’s strongest arguments are likely to be the size of the penalty compared with any proven harm to individual residents, and the way the violation count was calculated: tens of millions of violations from a couple of dozen statements reaching the state’s population. New Mexico will respond that the deception reached its entire population, that the company is enormously profitable, and that a penalty has to be large enough to actually deter. Whatever the appeal brings, this case has already shown how state consumer-protection laws can create very large exposure for tech platforms. Meta has a strong chance of getting $25 billion New Mexico penalty slashed on appeal | Reuters · CNN · Source New Mexico And finally, with the midterms eight days away, Reuters has a useful look at how the Supreme Court’s decisions this year have reshaped the election, and it’s worth pulling the threads together, because we’ve covered many of them one at a time. In April, the Court further weakened Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, making it harder for minority voters to challenge district maps as racially discriminatory, and several Republican-led Southern states then moved quickly to break up House districts with large Black populations. In June, the Court struck down federal limits on how much political parties can spend in coordination with their candidates. This month, it froze the challenge to the FCC’s guidance extending discounted ad rates to party committees, keeping it in place through the election. And last month, it allowed the administration’s SAVE voter-verification system to be used for the midterms. Other rulings went the other way. The Court refused to let the Postal Service impose new mail-ballot restrictions, with only Justices Thomas and Alito publicly dissenting, and it barred Missouri from using its new Republican-drawn congressional map. Law professor Ilya Somin’s assessment, quoted by Reuters, is that Republicans have gained a net benefit from the Court’s election rulings, while Justice Kagan has criticized the conservative majority for declining to rein in partisan gerrymandering. At the same time, polls suggest Democrats remain in a strong position. Two broader observations. First, many of these decisions came on the emergency docket, with short or no explanations, which leaves less guidance for future cases. Second, timing matters as much as substance. Some rulings changed the rules months ahead; others froze the status quo by putting off a decision until after the election. Either way, the Court has shaped this election in more ways than almost any other in recent memory. US Supreme Court rulings reshape midterm election battlefield | Reuters · SCOTUSblog · US News This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe
