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A Local Dispute With National Stakes
On September 25, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit will hear oral arguments in a case that began as an internal Republican Party dispute in rural Indiana and has grown into a constitutional contest over who controls ballot access. A decision is expected in the months that follow, and both sides are treating the outcome as consequential far beyond Brown County.
The appeal, Stanley and Clark v. Brown County Election Board (No. 26-1186), asks whether a county election board may enforce a political party’s five-year ban declaring two Republicans “not in good standing,” thereby keeping them off the party’s primary ballot. The plaintiffs are Brown County Commissioner Tim Clark and attorney Richard E. Stanley Jr. The defendant is the Brown County Election Board. A federal district judge dismissed their lawsuit in January 2026; they are asking the Seventh Circuit to reverse.
As of mid-September 2026, the case remains fully briefed. The Election Board moved on August 31 to waive oral argument or, alternatively, to present it by video conference. Stanley and Clark filed a response opposing the motion on September 8, arguing that the case raises foundational questions about democratic process and ballot access that warrant full in-person argument. On September 10, the Seventh Circuit denied both requests by the Election Board’s attorneys. The court determined that “the decisional process would be aided by oral argument” (citing Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2)(C)) and rejected the request to proceed by video. Oral argument remains scheduled for September 25 in Chicago.
01 — Origins
How it started
The fight over “good standing” began before Clark ever won office. When he filed as a Republican candidate for County Commissioner District 3 in 2024, Brown County Republican Party Chair Mark Bowman challenged his candidacy before the primary. Bowman alleged that Clark had submitted incomplete and untrue candidate forms and was “not affiliated with the Republican Party.” The argument, as Clark later described it, was that he was an independent rather than a Republican with an independent mind.
The Brown County Election Board rejected that challenge. It refused to accept Bowman’s claim that Clark was not in good standing and confirmed that Clark met the legal criteria to run as a Republican. Clark went on to win the Republican primary.
That early board ruling is now part of the larger story because the same Election Board later took a different posture once the state party issued its five-year ban. In 2024, the board declined to keep Clark off the Republican ballot on Bowman’s good-standing theory. In 2026, after the party’s disciplinary decision, the board removed Stanley from the Republican primary ballot.
Clark has said he primarily voted Republican but occasionally supported a more fiscally conservative non-Republican. He also noted that Bowman himself had previously criticized straight-ticket voting, saying the candidate from one’s own party is not always the best choice.
After Clark won the primary, Bowman publicly supported independent Greg Taggart against the Republican nominee. Taggart acknowledged that he was not a Republican. During closing remarks at a League of Women Voters candidate forum, Taggart said he was neither a Republican nor a Democrat and asked not to be placed in either category. That public acknowledgment is central to Clark’s Rule 1-25 complaint: Bowman, as party chair, supported a candidate who had rejected the Republican label against the Republican nominee.
Clark viewed that support as a violation of Indiana Republican Party Rule 1-25, which defines a “Republican in Good Standing” as someone who supports Republican nominees and does not actively or openly support another candidate against a Republican nominee.
In December 2024, Clark—joined by Stanley and two others—filed an internal complaint against Bowman only. Other Republican elected officials, candidates, and precinct officers had also backed Taggart, but the complainants deliberately limited the filing to Bowman. Their stated goal was to address the leadership problem without fracturing the party, leaving room to rebuild if Bowman were found not in good standing.
At a January 23, 2025, hearing before the 9th District Republican Committee, the officers dismissed the complaint against Bowman. Instead, they ruled that Clark and Stanley themselves were not Republicans in good standing for five years. Stanley’s ban rested on an alleged contribution to Taggart, which he has consistently denied. Clark’s ban cited a “long and well-documented history” of opposing Republican candidates, supporting non-Republicans, and self-identifying as independent—characterizations he disputes.
In a February 2025 letter to the Brown County Democrat, Clark described the hearing as a surprise proceeding in which he and Stanley were placed “on trial” without notice. He said district officers relied on “unwritten rules”: that the party is a private club, that criticism or any past support for a non-Republican can disqualify someone, and that the rules can be applied selectively. Clark noted that the committee had no power to remove him from his current office but that election-board enforcement of the ban could block future Republican candidacies.
Bowman was later re-elected as county party chair. His wife became vice chair and his son secretary. Only two votes out of roughly twenty were cast against the family slate.
02 — The controlling case
What Hero actually held
U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt dismissed Stanley and Clark’s lawsuit with prejudice in January 2026, relying heavily on the Seventh Circuit’s 2022 decision in Hero v. Lake County Election Board, 42 F.4th 768. That opinion is why this appeal exists. It is also, the plaintiffs argue, why the district court got the facts of Brown County backward.
Joseph Hero had been a registered Republican for forty years. He voted in Republican primaries, held party office—including as Lake County Republican chairman—and ran as a Republican with occasional success. In St. John, in Lake County, he opposed a town-council plan to seize the property of lower-income residents through eminent domain. He then publicly backed two independent candidates running against incumbent Republican councilmembers. The Indiana Republican Party declared him “not a Republican in good standing” for ten years. When he tried to appear on the 2019 Republican primary ballot, the Lake County Election Board struck his name.
Hero sued the election board, not the party. The Seventh Circuit, in an opinion by Judge Amy St. Eve, held that the board did not violate his First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. The court described the restriction as “minor” because Indiana law still allowed him to run as an independent or as a write-in candidate. Political parties, the court said, may protect themselves from “intrusion by those with adverse political principles,” and a state may enforce that membership decision at the ballot. The panel concluded the restriction was reasonable and nondiscriminatory.
On those facts, applying Rule 1-25 was appropriate and justified. Hero was a Republican who publicly backed independents against Republican nominees. That is the conduct the rule is written to reach. The party’s response, and the election board’s enforcement of it, followed the rule as written. No serious argument exists that Hero’s conduct fell outside the text.
The district court treated that holding as the end of the inquiry in Stanley and Clark. The comparison, however, is as much the point of the appeal as the legal test. Hero answers what a party may do when a member openly supports an independent against a Republican nominee. It does not answer what a public election board may do when the party applies that rule to the members who invoked it, and not to the chair who broke it.
“The decision to strike Hero’s name from the ballot imposed only a minor restriction on his ballot access.”
— Hero v. Lake County Election Board, 42 F.4th 768 (7th Cir. 2022)
03 — Selective enforcement
The same rule, applied two ways
The absurdity is not that Hero lost. The absurdity is that the conduct which justified his ban is the same conduct Brown County Republican leadership then engaged in—and was not punished for.
Rule 1-25 defines a Republican in good standing as someone who supports Republican nominees and does not actively or openly support another candidate against a Republican nominee. That is the rule applied to Hero. Bowman also invoked the same rule against Clark before the 2024 primary, and Clark later invoked it against Bowman.
After Clark won the Republican nomination, Bowman—the sitting chair of the Brown County Republican Party—publicly supported independent Greg Taggart against the Republican nominee. Others in leadership positions did the same. At a public League of Women Voters forum, Taggart said he was neither a Republican nor a Democrat and asked not to be placed in either category. He was not a Republican who had wandered off the reservation. He had rejected the label out loud.
Clark and Stanley followed the process the party rules require. They filed a complaint against Bowman, limited it to the chair rather than a wider purge, and put the evidence before the 9th District Republican Committee. The complaint against Bowman was ignored. Clark and Stanley were then ruled not in good standing without receiving a formal complaint of their own, without notice that they were the accused, and without an opportunity to counter the allegations.
The reason is obvious. The evidence against Bowman was clear: a sitting party chair had publicly supported a candidate who, in a public forum, said he was not a Republican, against the Republican nominee. That is Hero. That is Rule 1-25. Had the district officers applied the same standard to Bowman that the Seventh Circuit accepted when it applied it to Joseph Hero, they would have found Bowman not in good standing for ten years. They could not punish Clark and Stanley without applying that standard to Bowman. So they did not apply it to Bowman. They applied it to the men who had invoked it.
That disparity is the factual core of the argument that Hero does not control this case. Hero involved evenhanded enforcement of a membership rule against a Republican who had backed independents. The Seventh Circuit called that restriction reasonable and nondiscriminatory. Here, the chair and others in leadership did what Hero did, while the members who followed the complaint process were declared not in good standing without a formal complaint, notice, or a chance to respond. The plaintiffs argue that this is not the party self-governance Hero protected. It is selective enforcement—unreasonable and discriminatory application of the same rule—carried out through a public election board.
Comparison of Key Actors
| Who | Conduct | Independent | Process | Result |
| Joseph Hero (2022) | Republican who publicly backed independents against GOP nominees | Independents running against Republican incumbents | Party ban after his own support for independents | Ten-year ban; struck from ballot. 7th Cir.: reasonable & nondiscriminatory |
| Mark Bowman | Party chair who publicly backed independent Taggart against the GOP nominee | Taggart stated in a public forum that he was not a Republican | Formal complaint filed against him; dismissed without equivalent sanction | Remains county chair; family slate elected |
| Clark & Stanley | Filed the Rule 1-25 complaint the party rules require | — | No formal complaint, no notice, no chance to counter | Five-year ban; Stanley removed from the 2026 Republican primary ballot |
04 — The appeal
The lawsuit and the road to Chicago
Clark and Stanley sued the Brown County Election Board in federal court in July 2025. They argued that enforcing the party’s decision would violate their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. They sought an injunction preventing the board from applying the ban. They did not sue the Republican Party itself.
Judge Pratt dismissed the case with prejudice in January 2026, treating Hero as controlling and concluding that the restriction was minor because Indiana still allowed independent or write-in candidacies. Stanley and Clark appealed.
While the appeal was pending, Stanley filed for the 2026 Republican primary for Commissioner District 2. On February 19, 2026, the Election Board—after a challenge citing the party ban—removed him from the ballot. A subsequent state-court suit seeking reinstatement was dismissed on res judicata grounds.
That sequence gives the appeal a sharper factual edge. The board once rejected Bowman’s effort to exclude Clark from a Republican primary on good-standing grounds. Later, after the district and state party rulings, the board enforced a similar theory against Stanley. The plaintiffs say that contrast matters. The election board stated it is applying party determinations and state election law, not inventing its own political discipline.
05 — Ballot access in practice
Why the independent alternative falls short
Courts have treated the independent route as a mitigating factor. Local electoral realities, however, suggest it is a weak substitute in Brown County.
Indiana remains one of the few states that still allows straight-ticket voting. In recent elections, large percentages of voters—often 40 to 70 percent in various counties—have used the option. A straight-ticket Republican vote automatically selects every Republican candidate and bypasses independents entirely. No independent has won a county commissioner race in recent Indiana history. Even Taggart—who publicly said he was not a Republican and still had the local party chair’s support—finished second in 2024 with roughly 29 percent of the vote, behind Clark’s 44.6 percent.
Stanley has always voted in Republican primaries. Running as an independent, he has argued, could itself be treated as further evidence of not supporting Republican nominees, potentially deepening the ban rather than ending it. For a candidate without party-insider backing, the independent path appears functionally closed.
That is the other half of the Hero problem. Judge St. Eve wrote that an independent can “tout his Republican virtues, tell voters he supports Republicans, put up yard signs to that effect, and run on a platform identical to any political party.” In a straight-ticket county, those yard signs never reach the voters who pull the Republican lever and never see an independent’s name. The legal alternative remains on the books. The practical one does not.
06 — The panel
What happens after September 25
The September 25 arguments will focus on whether Hero controls, whether the board’s enforcement of this particular party decision constitutes unconstitutional state action, and whether the burden on ballot access is truly minor given Indiana’s electoral structure. The panel may also probe the factual disputes surrounding the ban, the process that produced it, and the board’s changing role: first rejecting Bowman’s pre-primary challenge to Clark, then later removing Stanley after the party’s five-year ruling.
If the plaintiffs are heard on the merits of the comparison, the panel will have to decide whether Hero still governs when the same rule is alleged to have been applied discriminatorily—when the chair who backed a self-described non-Republican kept his office. The members who followed the complaint process were banned without a complaint of their own. A decision that treats those facts as indistinguishable from Hero’s would extend the 2022 holding from evenhanded party discipline to selective enforcement. A decision that distinguishes them would be the first signal that Hero has a factual limit.
A Seventh Circuit decision affirming the district court would reinforce party autonomy over primary ballots and leave the five-year ban intact for Republican primaries. A reversal or remand could open the door to closer judicial scrutiny of party disciplinary decisions when government election boards enforce them—especially when those decisions allegedly rest on disputed facts or retaliatory motives.
That ruling would not necessarily end the case. If the Seventh Circuit rules against Stanley and Clark, they could ask the same panel or the full court to rehear the appeal. Those requests are rarely granted. They could then petition the U.S. Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari. The Supreme Court would not have to hear the case. It grants only a small fraction of petitions, usually when there is a split among the circuits or a question the justices consider nationally important.
Still, that possibility remains part of the path forward. A Supreme Court petition would ask whether an election board’s enforcement of a party “good standing” ban violates federal constitutional rights, and whether Hero should control these facts. Any such review would take additional months. Because Stanley’s 2026 Republican primary opportunity has already passed and Clark’s current term runs through 2028, a later ruling would likely matter more as precedent than as immediate ballot relief.
The forthcoming Seventh Circuit opinion will provide the first appellate word on whether the district court correctly applied Hero to these specific facts. That decision will determine the immediate path for Clark’s potential 2028 candidacy and Stanley’s future eligibility. It will also set circuit precedent on the boundary between private party discipline and public ballot access—unless the losing side seeks further review and the Supreme Court agrees to take the case.
The dispute remains local in its origins: a fight over Rule 1-25, a county party chair, and two men who challenged the local leadership. Yet its implications reach further. It asks whether a political party, acting through a public election board, can close the primary door for reasons the excluded candidates call false or selective, and whether the formal availability of an independent line is enough when that line rarely leads to victory.
On September 25, the Seventh Circuit will hear the arguments in person in Chicago. The decision that follows—expected in the months afterward—will determine whether this Brown County fight ends as a settled matter of party discipline, returns for further proceedings, or continues toward a possible request for Supreme Court review.
Tim J. Clark
Personal Disclosure: I am a plaintiff in Stanley and Clark v. Brown County Election Board. I have a direct personal interest in the outcome of this case. I am writing this article as a private citizen, and it reflects my perspective on the litigation.
Author’s Notes & Disclosures. The article was written with the assistance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools.
Additional Information. For more information regarding the arguments and counter-arguments: PACER: Public Access to Court Electronic Records
Editorial Disclosure
The Brown County Record is an independent, privately operated civic publication. It is not an official publication of Brown County government and does not represent the views or positions of the Brown County Commissioners or any other county office.
Although I serve as a Brown County Commissioner, the views and opinions expressed in the Brown County Record are my own, as a private citizen, and not in my official capacity.
As a plaintiff in Stanley and Clark v. Brown County Election Board, I have a direct personal interest in the case discussed in this article. Readers should consider that relationship when evaluating my reporting, analysis, and opinions.