## Facts

- The Democratic Party’s national rules for the 1980 convention limited participation in delegate selection to voters who publicly declared and recorded Democratic affiliation.
- Wisconsin used an open presidential preference primary permitting any qualified voter, including non-Democrats, to vote in the Democratic primary without declaring party affiliation.
- Wisconsin law required delegates to the Democratic National Convention to be bound to vote at the convention in accordance with the open primary results, even though delegates were chosen later at party caucuses of self-identified Democrats.
- The Democratic Party announced it would not seat Wisconsin’s 1980 delegation because the state’s binding requirement conflicted with national party rules.
- Wisconsin officials sought a declaratory judgment that the state system was constitutional and that the Democratic Party could not refuse to seat the delegation.
- The Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld the state scheme; the U.S. Supreme Court reversed.

## Issues

1. Whether a state may constitutionally require a national political party to seat and recognize convention delegates whose votes are bound by an open primary in conflict with the party’s national delegate-selection rules.
2. Whether enforcing such a binding requirement impermissibly burdens the national party’s First and Fourteenth Amendment associational rights.

## Decision

- The U.S. Supreme Court reversed, holding 6–3 for the Democratic Party.
- Wisconsin could not constitutionally compel the national party to seat a delegation chosen and bound in violation of national party rules.
- The Court treated the national party’s rules on participation and delegate voting as protected associational choices that state law could not override.
- Wisconsin’s interests in conducting an open primary and giving effect to its results did not justify imposing binding constraints on the national convention’s internal decision-making.

## Legal Principles

- Political parties have First Amendment associational rights, protected against state infringement through the Fourteenth Amendment, including the right to define the association’s membership and participation requirements.
- A state may regulate and administer its own primary elections, but it may not dictate the internal governance of a national party convention by compelling compliance with state rules that conflict with national party rules.
- State election interests, even if legitimate and weighty, do not permit forcing a national party to accept delegates whose convention votes are determined through a process that the party’s rules exclude.

## Conclusion

The Court held that Wisconsin’s open primary could be conducted and publicized, but the state could not constitutionally bind the Democratic Party’s national convention delegates to the open primary’s results when doing so conflicted with the party’s national rules, because that compulsion violated the party’s associational rights.


Democratic Party of the U.S. v. Wisconsin ex rel. La Follette, 450 U.S. 107 (1981)