Thomas
INDIANAPOLIS — Bartholomew County Democratic Party Chair Ross Thomas has urged the Indiana Supreme Court to turn away an appeal by Columbus City Council member Joseph “Jay” Foyst, who is seeking to overturn an appellate court decision that stripped him of his council seat, finding he was an invalid candidate in the 2023 municipal election.
Foyst had filed an appeal to the Indiana Supreme Court — known as a petition to transfer — on Aug. 30, asking the justices to assume jurisdiction over the case and vacate an Indiana Court of Appeals decision in July in which a panel of judges unanimously ruled that he was not a valid candidate for Columbus City Council District 6 in the 2023 election.
On Thursday, Thomas formally responded to Foyst’s petition to transfer, arguing that the state’s high court should not intervene because the panel of appellate judges “properly applied existing case law to unambiguous election law statutes” and that the facts in the case are not in dispute, according to a copy of his response.
Thomas further argues that any decision that leads to upholding Foyst’s candidacy would “render filing deadlines for candidates for public office meaningless” and “throw our entire system of ballot access into chaos.”
While Foyst has asked the Indiana Supreme Court to take up the case, the high court has no obligation to do so. If the justices decide not to hear the case, the appellate court decision will be final.
“The Indiana legislature has seen fit to establish an orderly and uniform process for placing candidates on the ballot in our elections,” Thomas states in his response. “This process includes strict deadlines which are not simply suggestions. There is no basis to suspend these rules for Mr. Foyst or to overturn established precedent, and by doing so, throw our entire system of ballot access into chaos.”
In the petition, Foyst’s attorneys challenge on several grounds the unanimous decision on July 16 by a panel of Indiana appellate court judges. They ruled that Foyst was not a valid candidate in the 2023 municipal election because the Bartholomew County Republican Party failed to “meet a statutory deadline for filling a vacancy on a general election ballot.”
The appellate judges sent the case back to a lower court with instructions to declare Bryan Muñoz, the Democratic nominee for the seat, the winner of the 2023 election.
Foyst’s attorneys have repeatedly argued that declaring his candidacy invalid would thwart the will of voters. Foyst defeated Muñoz in the 2023 election while the lawsuit challenging his candidacy was still pending.
“Mr. Foyst won. The opinion improperly gave the defeated candidate the council seat by holding that the winning candidate could not be renominated for the council seat because the first notice of caucus was filed a day late,” Foyst’s attorneys argue in the petition. “The opinion, if allowed to stand, would serve only to thwart the will of the 454 voters who chose Mr. Foyst to represent them on the Columbus City Council.”
The response is the latest twist in a dispute over Foyst’s candidacy that started this past summer over the Bartholomew County Republican Party’s efforts to fill a vacancy for the Columbus City Council District 6 seat in the 2023 general election.
Foyst was initially selected as the Republican nominee for Columbus City Council District 6 in the 2023 municipal election during a party caucus held in July 2023 after nobody filed to run for the seat in the GOP primary, leaving a vacancy in the Nov. 7 general election.
Thomas challenged Foyst’s candidacy this past summer, arguing that local GOP officials failed to file a required notice of the party caucus with the Bartholomew County Clerk’s Office before the state-imposed deadline. In August, the bipartisan Bartholomew County Election Board upheld Thomas’ challenge and removed Foyst from the ballot.
However, the Bartholomew County Republican Party decided to hold another caucus and selected Foyst once again to fill the vacancy, pointing to a section in the Indiana Code that allowed the GOP to fill the vacancy following “the successful challenge of a candidate.”
Thomas then attempted to challenge Foyst’s candidacy again, but his request was denied by Bartholomew County Clerk Shari Lentz because the deadline had passed to file a challenge, prompting Thomas to file a lawsuit against Foyst and all three members of the Bartholomew County Election Board, including Lentz.
The case was initially assigned to Bartholomew Circuit Judge Kelly Benjamin, who recused herself. The case was later turned over to Special Judge K. Mark Loyd. In November, Loyd dismissed the claims against the Bartholomew County Election Board, leaving Foyst as the lone defendant.
While the lawsuit was pending before the special judge, Foyst won the Columbus City Council District 6 seat in the 2023 municipal election, defeating Muñoz with 59.5% of the vote.
The dispute in the lawsuit largely centered around the interpretation of Indiana Code 3-13-1-7(b)(7) and the extent to which it applies to Foyst. The law states that a political party may take action to fill a ballot vacancy within 30 days following “the successful challenge of a candidate,” provided that the vacancy is filled more than 13 days before the election.
Thomas, for his part, argued that the provision does not apply to Foyst because he was “never a valid candidate” because the local GOP missed a filing deadline for the first caucus.
“Missing the deadline ends the game,” Thomas argued in court filings earlier this year. “… A ‘successful challenge of a candidate’ would only apply to someone that was at some point a valid candidate on the ballot, not a ‘candidacy that never existed’ because it was untimely.”
Foyst’s attorneys argued that removing Foyst from office would disenfranchise voters and questioned why missing a statutory filing deadline would invalidate his candidacy.
“… (Thomas) expends much verbiage claiming that the vacancy could not be filled by Mr. Foyst because his original candidacy filing was a day late. The obvious question is why not? There was a vacancy. There is no claim he did not meet the qualifications for the post.”
A couple of weeks after Foyst was sworn into office, Loyd upheld his candidacy, ruling that the additional Republican caucus in which Foyst was elected to fill a vacancy for the party’s nomination for Columbus City Council District 6 met requirements under state law.
“This case involves mostly undisputed facts, and ultimately the legal conclusion turns on matters of statutory interpretation,” Loyd said in the ruling. “The legislature is presumed to act intentionally, and the analysis is nonpartisan.”
Thomas appealed the lower court’s decision.
The panel of appellate judges, for their part, sided with Thomas, finding that “Foyst’s candidacy never existed in the eyes of the law” and therefore could not be placed on the ballot during the second caucus.
Earlier this summer, Foyst unsuccessfully attempted to pause the appeals court decision, arguing that “new information has come to light” regarding Muñoz’s residency, alleging that his opponent may not have been residing in the district.
Muñoz told The Republic previously that he had been renting a place in Fishers to temporarily be closer to work while the legal challenge over his opponent’s candidacy was playing out but has been maintaining residence in District 6 with what he described as a “close family friend.”
“As I was waiting for the challenge to play out, I started staying closer to work in Indianapolis, but I still have residence in District 6,” Muñoz said. “So, when the time comes to be sworn in, I’ll be a resident of District 6. It’s obviously a complicated situation because of how slow the judicial process took.”
