Wading through the “Morass”: The Eleventh Circuit Recognizes a Right to Candidacy in Randall v. Scott

On June 30, 2010, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Randall v. Scott held that the First Amendment affords protection to an individual based on the mere basis of that individual’s political candidacy. In so doing, the Randall court departed from other federal circuit courts, which had approached the issue by way of analogy to the First Amendment freedoms of speech and association. This Comment concludes that the Eleventh Circuit’s novel approach, although well intentioned, is only tenuously grounded in Supreme Court precedent.