Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/447

 502us2$22M 08-19-96 17:40:23 PAGES OPINPGT

Cite as: 502 U. S. 279 (1992)

289

Opinion of the Court

weighty to justify the limitation, see Anderson, supra, at 789, and we have accordingly required any severe restriction to be narrowly drawn to advance a state interest of compelling importance. See Socialist Workers Party, supra, at 184, 186. By such lights we now look to whether §§ 10–2 and 10–5, as construed by the Supreme Court of Illinois, violate petitioners’ right of access to the Cook County ballot. A Reversing the judgment of the Circuit Court, the State Supreme Court held, under § 10–5, that the Cook County candidates could not claim to represent the HWP because there already was a party by that name in the city of Chicago. The court gave no reasons for so concluding beyond declaring that “petitioner[s’] use of the Harold Washington Party name in their petition. . . violate[d] the provisions of section 10–5,” which, the court noted, “prohibits use of the name of an established political party.” Thus, the issue on review is not whether the Chicago HWP and the Cook County HWP are in some sense “separate parties,” but whether and how candidates running for county office may adopt the name of a party established only in the city. While the Board based its answer to this question on a determination that the city HWP had authorized petitioners to use the Party name, the State Supreme Court’s order seems to exclude the very possibility of authorization, reading the prohibition on the “use of the name of an established political party” so literally as to bar candidates running in one political subdivision from ever using the name of a political party established only in another. As both the dissent below and the opinion of the Board suggest, however, this Draconian construction of the statute would obviously foreclose the development of any political party lacking the resources to run a statewide campaign. Just as obviously, § 10–5, as the State’s highest court apparently construed it,