As former President Donald Trump dominates the Republican presidential primary, some liberal groups and legal experts contend that a rarely used clause of the Constitution prevents him from being president after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The 14th Amendment bars from office anyone who once took an oath to uphold the Constitution but then “engaged” in “insurrection or rebellion” against it. A growing number of legal scholars say the post-Civil War clause applies to Trump after his role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election and encouraging his backers to storm the U.S. Capitol.
Two liberal nonprofits pledge court challenges should states’ election officers place Trump on the ballot despite those objections.
The effort is likely to trigger a chain of lawsuits and appeals across several states that ultimately would lead to the U.S. Supreme Court, possibly in the midst of the 2024 primary season. The matter adds even more potential legal chaos to a nomination process already roiled by the front-runner facing four criminal trials.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A growing number of legal scholars say the post-Civil War clause applies to Trump after his role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election and encouraging his backers to storm the U.S. Capitol.
“There’s a very real prospect these cases will be active during the primaries,” said Gerard Magliocca, a law professor at Indiana University, warning that there could be different outcomes in different states before the Supreme Court makes a final decision.
That section bars anyone from Congress, the military, and federal and state offices if they previously took an oath to support the Constitution and “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”
Trump argues that any effort to prevent him from appearing on a state’s ballot amounts to “election interference” — the same way he is characterizing the criminal charges filed against him in New York and Atlanta and by federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., and Florida.
On Wednesday, a long-shot Republican presidential candidate, John Anthony Castro, of Texas, filed a complaint in a New Hampshire court contending the 14th Amendment barred Trump from that state’s ballot.
Ratified in 1868, the 14th Amendment helped ensure civil rights for freed slaves — and eventually for all people in the U.S. — but also was used to prevent former Confederate officials from becoming members of Congress and taking over the government they had just rebelled against.
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