Raúl Labrador, who won his race for Idaho attorney general, talks with attendees at the Idaho GOP election night watch party at the Grove Hotel in Boise, Idaho, on Nov. 8, 2022. (Otto Kitsinger for Idaho Capital Sun)
An Idaho judge denied Idahoans for Open Primaries’ request to have the Idaho Office of the Attorney General pay its attorney fees in litigation.
Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador had unsuccessfully sued to block the election reform ballot initiative, arguing that initiative organizers misled some Idaho voters by portraying the initiative as a proposed open primary law when it actually sought broader election reforms.
Idaho 4th District Judge Patrick Miller dismissed Labrador’s legal challenge in September. But Miller, in a Dec. 18 decision, ruled he didn’t find that the attorney general lacked a reasonable legal or factual basis to pursue his challenge, even though Idahoans for Open Primaries were the prevailing party in litigation.
Miller ordered the Idaho Attorney General’s Office to pay $96 in costs accrued by Idahoans for Open Primaries. But he didn’t order the office to pay almost $65,000 in attorney fees requested by Idahoans for Open Primaries.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.
‘Plaintiff had some evidence,’ judge says in ruling
Judge Miller, in his ruling, wrote that Idaho law on attorney fees awards clearly spells out a high legal standard.
“The statute’s language is plain and unambiguous,” he wrote. “The district court shall award attorney fees to the prevailing party if it finds 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 basis in fact or law is set high.”
While Miller wrote Idahoans for Open Primaries were the prevailing party in the case, he ruled he couldn’t find that Labrador’s position was without a reasonable legal or factual basis.
Labrador had cited Idaho law prohibiting false statements in petitions in his legal challenge.
“Plaintiff had some evidence, untested in discovery or through cross-examination, that signature gatherers said that the initiative would constitute a primary system such as existed prior to 2012,” Miller wrote. “In the abstract, this was a concerning allegation. But the minimal evidence submitted was, in the Court’s judgement, insufficient from which the Court could draw a reasonable inference that 12,000 signatures could be rejected on this basis.”
Miller also wrote he disagreed with Labrador’s argument that the Idaho Supreme Court, in a ruling that determined top-four primary was the best term to describe the proposed initiative’s election system, limited how organizers could discuss it.
“The simple fact that Defendants did not market the initiative using the precise language prescribed for the ballot initiative did not, in this Court’s judgement, render such statements false,” Miller wrote.
The Idaho Office of the Attorney General and an attorney for Idahoans for Open Primaries could not be immediately reached for comment.
How we got here
If it had passed, the ballot initiative — widely known as the open primaries initiative — would’ve eliminated closed, partisan primary elections in Idaho.
The new election structure proposed would have sent the top four primary candidates to a general election where voters could rank candidates in order of preference, through what’s known as ranked-choice voting or instant-runoff voting.
Idaho voters widely rejected the ballot initiative, Proposition 1, in the Nov. 5 election, with over 69% of votes against it, according to unofficial election results.
Labrador filed a legal challenge seeking to block the initiative on Aug. 16, days after the Idaho Supreme Court dismissed Labrador’s previous challenge against the initiative filed on July 24.
Miller dismissed Labrador’s district court challenge on Sept. 5.
In November, the judge heard oral arguments from attorneys for the Idaho Office of the Attorney General and Idahoans for Open Primaries — on whether the Idaho Attorney Generals’ Office should pay attorney fees.
YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE.
57. Memorandum Decision and Order on Plaintiffs Motion to Disallow (1)