The court was once again packed, I was pleasantly surprised to see. A number of people were left standing out in the hall.
Judge Karnow said he would make a ruling within a day or two, but no one saw any basis for optimism. He asked the plaintiff's attorney (I'm sorry I still haven't registered his name) two "gotcha" questions. (a) One was whether, if he had won, he would have sought attorney's fees, and from whom. The attorney replied that he would seek fees from the Secretary of State. In that case, the judge said, allowing him to win the case would harm the public interest since the taxpayers would have to foot the bill. (Never mind the harm to the public interest being done by the law he was seeking to challenge.) (b) He asked whether the attorney wanted him to make a ruling based on the merits of the top-two law (presumably as he saw them). The attorney said no (I would think a better answer would have been that he was seeking a ruling, not on whether it was a "good" law, but just on whether it was Constitutional.), and added that there were no similar cases where plaintiffs were required to pay attorneys' fees. The opposition attorney countered with several cases, involving people or organizations like the KKK, where attorneys' fees had indeed been assessed. Richard's attorney tried to respond by saying that those plaintiffs sought to restrict people's rights, whereas he was only seeking to restore them. But then he was implicitly asking the judge to rule on the merits of the law, and Karnow obviously noticed.
Many people appeared to feel that there were additional points Richard's attorney should have made. I didn't hear what they were; I only heard the attorney's repeated reply that he didn't want to complicate the record-evidently not wanting to give the other side any more rope to hang him with on appeal. But, as far as I know, there can be no appeal until we raise $243,500 for Richard.