The federal court decision from last year which found Virginia’s “open primary” unconstitutional as applied, was not appealed. It became final and binding on the State this week. The VA system forced parties which participated in the state-run primary election to allow any voter to vote in their primary.

The trial court held that forcing the party to select its candidate through an open primary severely burdened its right of free association. The court rejected the state’s arguments that it had such compelling interests in forcing the First Amendment deprivation upon the parties. Miller v. Brown, 503 F3d 360, 368 (4th Cir 2007)

The take-away from this is that the parties must be free to select their own nominees by some means.