Trump appeals Maine ruling barring him from ballot under the Constitution’s insurrection clause

Trump’s critics have filed dozens of lawsuits seeking to disqualify him from the ballot in multiple states.

None succeeded until a slim majority of Colorado’s seven justices — all of whom were appointed by Democratic governors — ruled against Trump. Critics warned that it was an overreach and that the court could not simply declare that the Jan. 6 attack was an “insurrection” without a more established judicial process.

A week after Colorado’s ruling, Bellows issued her own. Critics warned it was even more perilous because it could pave the way for partisan election officials to simply disqualify candidates they oppose. Bellows, a former head of Maine’s branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, has previously criticized Trump and his behavior on Jan. 6.

Bellows said her own views had nothing to do with her ruling, which sought to apply the law. She acknowledged the Supreme Court would probably have the final say after the Colorado case but said she still had a responsibility to act. She was the first top election official to do so. Many others, Democrats and Republicans had told activists urging them to strike Trump from the ballot that they did not have that power.

Section 3 is novel legal territory in the past century, barely used since the years after the Civil War, when it kept defeated Confederates from returning to their former government positions. The two-sentence clause says that anyone who swore an oath to “support” the Constitution and then engaged in insurrection cannot hold office unless a two-thirds vote of Congress allows it.

Congress granted amnesty to most former Confederates in 1872, and Section 3 fell into disuse. Legal scholars believe its only application in the 20th century was being cited by Congress in 1919 to block the seating of a socialist who opposed U.S. involvement in World War I and was elected to the House of Representatives.

But it returned to use after Jan. 6, 2021. In 2022, a judge used it to remove a rural New Mexico county commissioner from office after he was convicted of a misdemeanor for entering the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Liberal groups sued to block Republican Reps. Madison Cawthorn and Marjorie Taylor Greene from running for reelection because of their roles on that day. Cawthorn’s case became moot when he lost his primary in 2022, and a judge ruled to keep Greene on the ballot.

Some conservatives warn that, if Trump is removed, political groups will routinely use Section 3 against opponents in unexpected ways. They have suggested it could be used to remove Vice President Kamala Harris, for example, because she raised bail money for people arrested after George Floyd’s murder at the hands of Minneapolis police in 2020.

Trump and his allies have attacked the cases against him as “anti-democratic” and sought to tie them to President Joe Biden because the Colorado case and some others are funded by liberal groups who share prominent donors with the Democratic president. But Biden’s administration has noted that the president has no role in the litigation.

Those who support using the provision against Trump counter that the Jan. 6 attack was unprecedented in American history and that there will be few cases so ripe for Section 3. If the high court lets Trump stay on the ballot, they’ve contended, it will be another example of the former president bending the legal system to excuse his extreme behavior.

Nicholas Riccardi, The Associated Press

by Canadian Press

Trump appeals Maine ruling barring him from ballot under the Constitution’s insurrection clause

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