LP Judicial Committee Censors Krawchuk’s Dissent in Martin v LNC
The Judicial Committee has acted on Austin Martin, et al.,’s appeal of the LNC decision on seating James Wylie as an LNC Regional Alternate. The Judicial Committee’s version of the opinions of its members has been issued.
The Judicial Committee stated, last sentence of their report:
“Mr. Krawchuk’s opinion has been partially redacted to remove portions this Committee finds objectionable.”
To the knowledge of this newspaper, censorship of minority JC opinions by the JC is unprecedented.
For the interested, we now present:
- Ken Krawchuk’s dissenting position as censored by the Judicial Committee.
- Ken Krawchuck’s actual dissenting position.
- The majority position.
The issue is that Mr. Wylie was elected as an alternate on May 10. He needed to pay money to turn himself into a Sustaining Member, which he did on May 15. On May 17, the LNC claimed that a fresh election was needed by Mr. Wylie’s Region before Wylie could be seated as a Regional Alternate. This claim was challenged by Mr. Austin Martin, but Martin’s claim was rejected by the LNC. Martin therefore appealed to the Judicial Committee, which overturned the LNC action.. A majority of the Judicial Committee held that “… the May 17, 2025 decision of the LNC to bar Mr. Wiley from being seated as the Region 1 alternate representative is hereby null and void.”
Did anyone check the validity of the names of the “Sustaining members” who signed onto the appeal? Does the LP actually have members with the following names:
Mike Hunt
Hugh Jazz
Ivanna Tinkle
Harry Dyck
Martin needed, at most, 96 names. Unless 38 are invalid, he complied.
Melissa Wong is also on there twice. It is obvious no one checked.
Darryl, would it also shock you to learn that there were no signatures? That the JC just accepted a list of names with “trust me bro”?
The list submitted for national convention delegates is always checked by party staff. Once the national convention delegates list is validated, I doubt staff bother reviewing the sustaining member list.
Petition gatherers cannot confirm the validity of sustaining members since that is not publicly available. As a result, more signatures than needed are collected to ensure the appeal meets the submission requirements. Every petition is expected to attract a handful of fake submissions as a protest.
Indeed, the list of National Convention Delegates is available in the National Convention minutes available as part of the LPs publicly available records. On the occasion I petitioned, I checked that list myself before submitting.
There no signatures submitted in this case.
Nine months to hold a hearing? The term is over in a little more than a month.
And what could be more fitting than to hold it at a hotel/complex named for Amway.
Stupid is as stupid does.
It was filed in February and because the LNC’s actions violated the bylaws, according to the JC, actions during that period may be void if Wiley’s vote had any possibility of affecting the result.
Ironically, Wiley resigned from the LNC a few months ago.
I have read the opinion and Martin won; the decision not to seat Wiley violated the bylaws. Blay Tarnoff, joined by Stephan Kinsella, Rob Latham, and Robert Stratton in favor.
“By a vote of four in favor and two opposing, the Libertarian National Judicial Committee hereby voids the decision of the LNC to refuse to seat Mr. Wiley on May 17, 2025.”
“Mr. Krawchuk’s opinion has been partially redacted to remove portions this Committee
finds objectionable.”
“Mr. Montoni did not issue or join an opinion but votes to uphold the decision of the LNC to refuse to seat Mr. Wiley on May 17, 2025.”
“Mr. Seebeck recused himself from the vote for having previously expressed his opinion
in regard to the issues in this case.” Note: Seebeck announce his recusal at the hearing.
My understanding of parliamentary documents is that when such a document lists particular things of the same type that a body may do, that list is exhaustive — there is no implication that it can do other things of the same type.
The Judicial Committee’s rules of appellate procedure say that the committee can “by a majority vote redact portions of the petition(s) and response(s) and amici.” Since it does not list the opinions of the committee’s members among the things that can be redacted, those opinions are excluded from the redaction power.
It would be helpful to post the decision, even if censored.
Soon enough, this will occur.
Krawchuk did post it already at Lpedia. We did not censor anyone. No single person on the JC has any obligation to help other members post their opinions on LPedia. I have simply volunteered to do so. I do not need authority to fail to something I have no positive obligation to do in the first place.
1) Where can we see the published opinion?
2) Can Mr Krawchuk publish his unredacted opinion outside official channels?