A weeklong hearing on one lawsuit to bar Trump from the ballot in Colorado begins Monday, while on Thursday oral arguments are scheduled before the Minnesota Supreme Court on an effort to kick the former president off the ballot in that state.
Even if they’re longshots, Muller said, they have a plausible legal path to success and raise important issues.Dozens of cases citing Section Three of the 14th Amendment have been filed in recent months, but the ones in Colorado and Minnesota seem the most important, according to legal experts. That’s because they were filed by two liberal groups with significant legal resources. They also targeted states with a clear, swift process for challenges to candidates’ ballot qualifications.
“Four years after taking an oath to ‘preserve, protect and defend’ the Constitution as President of the United States…Trump tried to overthrow the results of the 2020 election, leading to a violent insurrection at the United States Capitol to stop the lawful transfer of power to his successor,” alleges the Colorado lawsuit, filed on behalf of Republican and unaffiliated voters by the liberal group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
The clause has only been used a handful of times since immediately after the Civil War. Trump’s lawyers contend that it was never meant to apply to the office of the president, which is not mentioned in the text, unlike “Senator or Representative in Congress” and “elector of President and Vice President.”
“Trump’s comments did not come close to ‘incitement,’ let alone ‘engagement’ in an insurrection,” his attorneys wrote in a filing in the Colorado case, adding examples of cases where the congressional authors of Section Three declined to use it against people who only rhetorically backed the confederacy.
Source: Law Daily Report (lawdailyreport.net)