It's hard to see what federal issues might warrant the decision by a U.S. district judge last week to block for two months the Oregon domestic partnership law.

Opponents of the law had filed suit claiming their rights were violated in the state's process of verifying signatures on their referendum petition. They have a case from the standpoint of fairness. Their petition lost partly because of the way statistical measures were applied in the process of counting or estimating those they did submit. They lost hundreds of probably valid signatures because just one was found to be duplicated in the state's sample, and no matter how often officials explain the statistical principle, it's hard to believe that that's fair.

Still, there are no federal referendum rights. This is strictly a state affair, and no matter how unfair the state might act, it's not a federal case. The federal courts should have stayed out. (hh)