The Wyoming Republican Party on Thursday filed a legal challenge to one Wyoming law that governs it: a ban on spending money to help one GOP primary election candidate over another.
State party leaders have been preparing for the filing for months at least.
In April, a bylaws committee, and ultimately the full state convention, advanced a bylaw saying that the party is a private group with the right to define its own leadership, structure, and message.
That includes reserving the “absolute First Amendment right” to endorse one Republican candidate over another.
State law imposes both privileges and restrictions on Wyoming’s major parties.
For example, the parties help fill office vacancies when their incumbents leave office or die mid-term. They also must have county committees that consist of party members elected by their neighbors, or precincts.
And under state law, the party can’t spend money to back one of its candidates over another in the primary election.
That leaves a roughly three-month window between the August primary election and the November general election during which the party can spend money on its nominees.
But This Is Wyoming
But in ultra-red Wyoming, the primary election contests between Republicans tend to be the most decisive, especially for statewide offices.
Anyone who spends money to boost one primary election candidate over another on the party’s behalf could face up to six months in jail and a fine of up to $1,000 in fines.
This thwarts the party’s wishes to distribute a voter guide declaring which primary election candidates best fit the state party’s platform, its Thursday lawsuit says.
“In the 2026 primary election and future primary elections, the WYGOP would like to expend money to publish and distribute guides to voters in various competitive, opposed Republican primaries ranking the candidates based on their alignment with the WYGOP’s platform,” says the complaint. “The guide would expressly endorsed the most aligned Republican.”
The party would do so now if not for the criminal penalties in state law, says the complaint.
The complaint says this Wyoming law is an unconstitutional violation of the party’s right to express its views under the First Amendment, and that it imposes a hyper-specific form of censorship on political parties.
Just This
The party’s new bylaws reference numerous areas in which state law controls the party — membership, leadership, organization, messaging. The bylaws claim the party, not the state, has the right to determine those approaches, and they also say the bylaws should take precedence over state law.
The party’s bylaws also call for internal mediation and arbitration proceedings.
But the state party’s Thursday complaint is not challenging the state’s laws regarding membership, meeting dates, organization or arbitration proceedings.
It is only challenging state Statute 22-25-104, the ban on selective financial backing before the primary election.
It asks for the court to declare that law wholly unconstitutional, and unconstitutional as applied to the party.
The party’s complaint asks for the court to block the office of Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray from enforcing that law against the party.
Gray did not respond by publication to a text message request for comment.
The complaint also asks for the court to order the state to compensate the Wyoming Republican Party for its reasonable costs and attorney’s fees.
Fresh Off Of …
This lawsuit follows the conclusion six days earlier of a different case in which Uinta County District Court Judge James Kaste ordered the Wyoming Republican Party to follow a different set of election laws that it had challenged as unconstitutional, as part of a lawsuit over who should lead the Hot Springs County Republican Party.
Kaste upheld, for example, a law barring people who aren’t elected precinct members from voting in leadership elections at the county party level.
The party’s bylaws say, conversely, that leadership officers who aren’t elected precinct people can vote.
Kaste sided with state law.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
