Add Minnesota to Colorado as states who are challenging trump’s eligibility to appear on the ballot.
One more and we’ll have a movement! (according to Arlo Guthrie)
But if we get 3 more after that we’ll have a schism. 
The People’s Front of Judea and the Judean People’s Front do not see eye to eye on this stuff.
I am wondering about this headline.
If only a few states keep Trump off the primary ballot, is it possible that the Supreme Court will rule in favor of those states, while not interfering with other states? If so, DJT would probably still get the nomination, while being given more fodder for the victimhood narrative.
I don’t think that’s correct.
See the case of Couy Griffin, who has been banned from office under the 14th. His participation in the Jan 6th riot was fairly small. He trespassed on Capitol grounds, but did not enter the building. His crime got him 14 days in jail. He was not convicted of sedition or insurrection, but it was enough to kick him out of office permanently.
Why should Trump need a conviction for Insurrection, when this guy didn’t?
You don’t have to find someone guilty of being less than 35 years old or not being a natural born citizen or any of the other qualifications. If a person falls into one of those categories, they are disqualified, end of story.
So I take this to mean:
If you want to disqualify someone from the ballot because they are not old enough, you only need to convince the court with sufficient evidence that they are not old enough. Likewise, if you want to disqualify them on the basis of not being a natural-born citizen, you need to prove that they are either not a citizen, or have been naturalized one rather than born one.
Thus if you want to convince the court that someone is not eligible due to participation in an insurrection, you need to convince the court that is true. It’s relatively straight-forward if you can point to a conviction for such a thing, but that’s not the only way. Once one court has established that he is ineligible in that way, that provides good evidence for another court, but unless they are in the same jurisdiction, they are free to ignore the ruling if they don’t like the grounds it was decided on. However, they almost certainly would need to be able to articulate a reason why the other court’s ruling would be incorrect, though given the nature of what judges can pull out of their ass, I suspect that won’t be too hard if someone was dead-set to not disqualify him.
Actually - you don’t have to convice the ‘court’ of any of those things - unless there is a dispute. The various groups that are responsible for getting people on the ballot validate the various requirements. Only if there is a bona-fide dispute would it ever get in front of the courts.
Case in point - Obama’s ‘Birth Certificate’ nonsense, Kamala’s qualifications to be VP/President, etc - were never challenged in any way, reguardless of the chatter about how they were not qualified.
In this case - there are enough folks challenging if Trump is dis-qualified (which is a slightly different question, given that he is otherwise qualified) that it might end up in front of the courts, should the people that get him on the ballot say - “nope, not gonna happen”.
Really? Didn’t Orly Taitz file about a dozen lawsuits all hinging upon the specific issue of Obama’s citizenship (or lack thereof)?
Well, there is a dispute. So far, unless I missed it, not a single state Secretary of State or similar has said that would exclude Trump from the primary (or general election) ballot, And those who have made statements say they will put him on the ballot:
Attempt to bar Donald Trump from 2024 ballot lands in New Jersey
And not only red states are refusing to exclude Trump:
I have an open mind over the wisdom of ballot exclusion, partly because I do not yet understand how it would work (except that it is only in the spirit of democracy if done early enough so the GOP can nominate someone else).
Perhaps there are five Supreme Court justices who would buy the argument against Trump being qualified. There certainly must be five who don’t like him! Is there any reason to believe that the Supreme Court would then rule on ballot access in every state, even where there was no legal dispute yet before it? I would like to see legal commentary on this.
I found a month-old partial answer, to the question in my last post, in the WaPo:
So, is there even a single blue state legislature stepping up to pass the apparently needed law saying that the Secretary of State must consider 14th amendment section 3 before putting a primary candidate on the ballot? Or are they all afraid of enabling President DeSantis? Or is the WaPo article’s implication, that the Supreme Court would require a related new state law, and will rule for Trump otherwise, implausible?
But of course, there will be a dispute.
In light of that quote from the Washington Post, though, I’ll amend my position: If there is, per the Constitution, some way of determining that a candidate is ineligible by virtue of insurrection, but the Constitution and federal law is silent on what that way would be, then it would, per the Tenth Amendment, fall to the legislatures of the states to determine what that method would be. So in addition to a conviction for insurrection, I would grant that a state legislature could establish a procedure for a candidate to be excluded from that state’s ballots.
And in terms of what will happen, as opposed to what should, I’ll predict that, if the matter ever appears before the Supreme Court, they’ll decide that it’s a matter for the states to determine, leaving open the situation where he’s excluded from some state ballots but not others.
Per the Tenth, that power would remain with the states, I agree. But wouldn’t the logical authority be the state’s executive branch, i.e., the SoS?
I wonder how those Secretaries of State would react if a 30 year old candidate petitioned to be added the the presidential primary? Would they have the the authority to prevent that candidate from being on the ballot? What about a candidate who was unambiguously born in another country? The Constitution clearly states they are ineligible. Would these SOS’s decline to enforce the Constitution?
The 14th Amendment is no different. It is sets an eligibility standard for candidates for president. Those with the authority to print ballots and conduct elections have a duty to enforce all eligibility requirements, including the 14th Amendment.
Depends on the state. If state law only says that they should be checking petition signatures, and fails to mention age, no. At least, that’s how the five most conservative Supreme Court justices might well read it.
And if you take the federal Constitution very literally, the insurrection qualification is for holding the office, not for running for office. The age requirement is worded differently, but can be interpreted the same way.
It would be bad for democracy to let the Republicans nominate a candidate who was unqualified but nonetheless won in November. That’s why I hope the Supreme Court doesn’t take the very literal approach. But they might.
There are a whole lot of ways this could play out. But I wouldn’t be too surprised if Trump’s running mate is president before Summer 2025.
Which suggests that some excellent “pump-priming” on these questions would be for some particular well-known 30yo to file for President in all 50 states. Miley Cyrus? Ditto some well-known foreign-born person. Arnold Schwarzenegger? Those two might be happy to lend their name and celebrity to the cause of forcing SCOTUS hand on this.
Which filings would immediately cause the question of which state authority decides eligibility under what standards to be ripe in all 50 states.
However this sort of challenge to trump’s place on the ballot plays out, the sooner it’s handled the better the odds for a peaceful and successful resolution.
That would depend on the individual state’s constitution, or failing that, their laws. The US Constitution leaves almost full leeway for how a state sets up its own government. A state needn’t even have branches of government at all.
In the case we actually have, I don’t think any state constitution nor law says anything about whose responsibility enforcement of the 14th Amendment would fall under (correct me if that’s wrong). Though they certainly could, and even if they don’t now, the law can be changed.
OK, now THERE is an interesting idea. There’s the potential for chaos if it doesn’t work, but then, in the situation we find ourselves in, every course of action has the potential for chaos.
Schwarzenegger sounds best, as he is AFAIK a never-Trump Republican.
This almost surely requires first getting signatures on petitions, and Schwarzenegger couldn’t realistically get enough for every state and territory with a primary. And every signer would have to be carefully told the intent to avoid charges of fraud. But submitting the petitions for a dozen states and territories might work.
Arnold? Are you lurking?
P.S. Fraud? Then is it fraud when Trump gets signatures without disclosing he is unqualified? Um, not quite. Sorry. The rules are a bit different for Trump.
They are different if, and only if, he & his enablers are allowed to get away with it. Which is the whole and entire point of the exercises of the last 3+years.
Given the current originalist-type thinking that dominates the Court’s latest rulings, I would not expect this. Consider that in the wake of the Civil War, Congress had refused to seat several former Confederate officials/officers before the 14th was passed. And then the 14th was passed to exclude such men from non-Congressional offices, so I’d say that it was definitely a federal matter in its origin.
However, if the originalists want issue a decision but also to dodge the issue, they could say that it only applies to the Civil War insurrectionists, since that’s who the writers of the Amendment had in mind. Not saying they’re going to do this, but it’s a clear possibility.
I wouldn’t think so. Eligibility for the single most important office should be uniform nation-wide. The interpretation of the 14th Amendment needs to be uniform, not vary from state to state.