A federal appeals panel took nine-time Olympic gold medalist Carl Lewis off a New Jersey
state Senate ballot Thursday, finding he does not meet the state's four-year residency requirement after all. The ruling in the topsy-turvy and politically charged case came nine days after the same three-judge panel from the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Lewis should be on the ballot. But instead of issuing a full legal opinion, the court scheduled another hearing, which it held earlier this week. And when its opinion came out Thursday, it was different than the earlier order: "Lewis has failed to show that, as applied to him, the four-year state residency requirement for the office of state senator in New Jersey has treated him unequally," the opinion said. And in a footnote, the Philadelphia court gave the practical directive to the clerks' offices in Atlantic, Burlington and Camden Counties: "The printing of ballots without Lewis' name may proceed."
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