The US Supreme Court held Thursday that a Delaware political independent lacked standing to challenge the state’s “bare majority” and “major party” requirements because he was not “able and ready” to apply for a judicial vacancy. This decision was unanimous, with newly-confirmed Justice Amy Coney Barrett abstaining from participation.

The case challenged a Delaware constitutional provision that requires the state’s major courts to maintain a partisan balance. Under this provision, no more than a bare majority of the Supreme Court, Chancery Court, Superior Court, Family Court and Court of Common Pleas “shall be of the same political party.” Additionally, the remaining members of the Supreme Court, Chancery Court and Superior Court “shall be of the other major political party.” James Adams, a lawyer and newly-registered independent asserted that the political balance requirements violated his First Amendment right to freedom of association by “making him ineligible to become a judge unless he rejoined a major political party.”

There are three requirements to determine if standing exists: injury, causation and redressability. The court determined that Adams did not show the requisite “injury in fact” to establish standing, which requires a plaintiff to show they will suffer “a concrete, particularized and imminent injury beyond a generalized grievance.” At a minimum, Adams had to show that he was “likely to apply to become a judge in the reasonably foreseeable future, if he were not barred because of political affiliation.” However, record evidence did not show that Adams was prepared to apply for such judgeship in the reasonably foreseeable future. Rather, the record reflected vacancies that Adams would have been eligible to apply for between 2012 and 2016, when he was a registered Democrat. He failed to apply for such vacancies.

The court further explained:

Adams suffered a “generalized grievance” of the kind we have just described. He, like all citizens of Delaware, must live and work within a State that (in his view) imposes unconstitutional requirements for eligibility on three of its courts. Lawyers, such as Adams, may feel sincerely and strongly that Delaware’s laws should comply with the Federal Constitution. But that kind of interest does not create standing. Rather the question is whether Adams will suffer a “personal and individual” injury beyond this generalized grievance—an injury that is concrete, particularized, and imminent rather than “conjectural or hypothetical.”

The court noted that bare intent does not translate to a particularized injury needed to have standing.