One week before the filing deadline for Texas candidates, a judge in Harris County blocked the secretary of state from assessing a new fee for third-party candidates that was added by the Legislature this past session.

Seven Libertarian voters and potential candidates sued over the law in state District Court in Harris County in October.

Being freed of filing fees ranging from $750 for a candidate for state representative to $5,000 for a U.S. Senate election is a big advantage for a party that operates on a shoestring budget and whose candidates often run with little to no cash in their campaign coffers.

“It has had a massively positive impact in the last three days on candidate recruitment,” Neal Dikeman, a plaintiff in the lawsuit and a former Libertarian nominee for U.S. Senate in 2018, said Wednesday, adding that the party had previously expected recruitment to decrease by 50 to 90 percent. “We have seen a huge upswing.”

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In a temporary injunction issued Monday, Judge Kristen Hawkins called the fees an “actual or threatened violation of the Texas and United States Constitutions.” The injunction applies statewide.

“This temporary injunction was a crucial step to ensuring voters have choice at the ballot box, as half of all Texas races in 2018 would have been unopposed without Libertarian Party nominees,” said Harris County Libertarian Party Chair Katherine Youngblood, who represented the plaintiffs.

While Democrats and Republicans are held to the same requirement as third-party candidates, attorneys for the Libertarians argued in court that the fee pays for a benefit — primary elections — that is not available to them.

The money goes back to the parties through funding from the state for their primary elections. Third parties such as the Libertarians and the Greens, which nominate through conventions rather than primaries, do not receive such funding.

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“The state cannot posit any set of circumstances in which this obstacle to the ballot would be legitimate,” the lawsuit says.

Republican state Rep. Drew Springer, who sponsored the bill with the new fee, House Bill 2504, did not respond to a request for comment on the injunction. But he said in an interview last month that he filed the bill “to make sure that everybody that’s running for office is treated equally.” People shouldn’t be charged differently based on their party, he said.

“You could make the argument that we should have made our fees zero,” Springer said. “I think having a little bit of money involved puts a little bit of skin in the game.”

The Texas Green Party did not respond to a request for comment, but it informed members of the “great news” in a newsletter Tuesday.

“If you have considered running as a Green, but have been held back by this requirement, you may wish to evaluate your candidacy in light of this development,” the email stated.

A similar but broader lawsuit was filed by the Texas Libertarian Party, as well as the Texas Green Party and other third-party groups, in federal court in July. That lawsuit, which contests several parts of the law that they say limit third-party access to the ballot, is pending.