Press Release: FEDERAL COURT FAILS TO ADDRESS CONSTITUTIONAL QUESTION IN WARE v. WEBER; WRITE-IN CAMPAIGN UNDERWAY, CONSTITUTIONAL CASE CONTINUES
Federal judge in Sacramento denies the campaign's emergency motion to restore Dr. Butch Ware to the June primary ballot on procedural grounds, leaving the constitutional question of California's tax-disclosure rule undecided. The Ware campaign's write-in operation has been active since late March, and the underlying constitutional case continues.
1. WHAT THE COURT DECIDED
SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA, MAY 12, 2026. On May 11, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California denied the Butch Ware for Governor 2026 campaign's emergency motion seeking to restore Dr. Ware to the June primary ballot. Senior District Judge William B. Shubb issued a four-page order. The order rules only on timing. It concludes that, with vote-by-mail ballots already in circulation and hundreds of thousands of Californians having already begun voting, a corrective order from the court at this stage would create more administrative complication than it would solve.
The order leaves the central question of the case unanswered. The constitutional question, whether the California Secretary of State's enforcement of the state's tax-return-disclosure statute against Dr. Ware violated his rights and the rights of California voters, was not decided. The Secretary's exclusion of Dr. Ware stands not because a federal judge has examined and approved it, but because a federal judge would not expedite a decision.
2. OUR RESPONSE
We were entirely prepared, and not surprised, by this outcome, because we understand what we are up against. Our public write-in operation has been active since the end of March, days after the Sacramento Superior Court denied our state petition. The BWARE Hotline (1-888-583-BWARE) launched March 31. Field organizing, voter outreach, and digital deployment have been running statewide for six weeks. Dr. Ware's Statement of Write-In Candidacy was filed with the Secretary of State's office in advance of the May 19 statutory deadline.
This campaign is a revolutionary movement, and such movements must inevitably confront and overcome institutional opposition of all kinds.
3. OUR PLAN FORWARD
We are pursuing two paths in parallel. The first is the write-in campaign. Under California's top-two primary system, established by Proposition 14 in 2010, a write-in candidate who finishes in the top two of the June 2 primary advances to the November general election. With sixty-one candidates in the gubernatorial field, the threshold for advancing is within reach for a focused, organized write-in. We are asking every Californian to write in Butch Ware on their June 2 ballot, and to make sure their neighbors and networks know how.
The second path is the ongoing federal civil-rights lawsuit. Our case continues in its regular course and will finally be decided on its merits. The Secretary of State, which has thus far offered only ‘it’s too late to change the election,’ must, within the next few days, actually answer our complaint in court. We intend to keep pressing for a federal ruling on whether California's tax-return-disclosure law for gubernatorial candidates is constitutional, and whether their procedural chicanery to exclude Dr. Ware from the ballot are lawful. We continue to pursue declaratory relief and injunctive relief that protect future candidates from the same statutory weapon in future election cycles. These legal questions cannot be closed by an order that was decided only on timing.
4. THE PATTERN, AND WHY WE WILL NOT STEP OUT OF THE FIGHT
The events that brought us to this point form a pattern that anyone watching California politics can recognize. The Secretary of State's exclusion of Dr. Ware is consistent with the procedural tools by which a Democratic supermajority defends its dominance against challengers from outside the two-party system. The federal court's ruling, declining to address the constitutional substance of that exclusion and deferring to the status quo on operational grounds, is consistent with the conservative judicial reflex to leave existing power arrangements undisturbed when confronted with a movement of change. We see the pattern. We name it. We have no intention of vacating the legal terrain simply because the terrain is structured against challenges like ours.
Lawfare is one of the primary vehicles by which the political establishment defends the status quo, crushes resistance, and legalizes the tactics of power consolidation that drain meaning from democratic choice. Procedural rulings can validate substantive wrongdoing simply by running out the clock. The shape of yesterday's order is recognizable in that frame: a court that declines to say whether the Secretary acted lawfully, but allows her actions to stand because they are now too far along to be disturbed. We do not accept that as the final word on the case, on the statute, or on the constitutional principle at stake.
"We do not have an issue with the tax-return-disclosure requirement in principle. We recognize that many Californians may see it as a tool of transparency, and we are not here to argue against transparency. What we are here to say is that from direct experience we now know intimately well how this statute is actually used. It is administered as an instrument of selective ballot-access denial, an instrument of power consolidation, and an instrument of voter disenfranchisement. A statute that looks principled on paper has been turned into a procedural weapon in practice, and that is the constitutional problem this case has identified." Dr. Saquib Usman, Campaign Manager, Butch Ware for California Governor 2026
"By any means necessary means by all necessary means. We continue to fight." Dr. Butch Ware, Candidate for Governor
Web: butchware4gov.org · Instagram: @butchware · Twitter: @ButchWare · Facebook: ButchWare4Gov2026