Section 3 Articles
The below articles discuss Mr. Trump's eligibility based on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment
Trump’s critics hope that Antonin Scalia can sway the Supreme Court in 14th Amendment fight
Liberal groups hoping to keep former President Donald Trump off the ballot for his role in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol are turning to a surprising source as they make their case to the Supreme Court: the late Justice Antonin Scalia and several of the court’s current conservatives.
The forces opposing Trump are citing a 2014 concurring opinion from Scalia, a hero of the conservative legal movement who died in 2016, as evidence that the 14th Amendment’s “insurrectionist ban” applies to former presidents – not just rank-and-file federal officials.
Others have called attention to an opinion Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in 2012 when he was a judge on the 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals. Gorsuch wrote states were permitted to exclude candidates from the ballot if they were constitutionally ineligible from serving in the office they sought.
Below is an article from Lawfare Institute discussing Justice Scalia's 2014 concurring opinion. Neil Gorsuch's 2012 opinion from 10th Circuit Court of Appeals case Hassan v. The State of Colorado (No. 12-1190, D.C. No. 1:11-CV-03116-MJW) is also below.
Source:
CNN online
By John Fritze; Updated 6:22 AM EST, Thu February 1, 2024
https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/01/politics/supreme-court-trump-14th-amendment-scalia/index.html
What Justice Scalia Thought About Whether Presidents Are “Officers of the United States”
In a 2014 concurrence and a short letter elaborating on it, Scalia indicated that the president was an “officer of the United States.”
Source:
Lawfare Institute online
Roger Parloff; Wednesday, January 24, 2024, 9:01 AM
As we approach the Feb. 8 oral arguments at the U.S. Supreme Court relating to whether former President Trump is disqualified from holding the office of the presidency under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, because of his alleged engagement in insurrection, one contention has emerged as Trump’s greatest legal hope: the argument that Section 3 does not apply to former President Trump because the president is not an “officer of the United States” within the meaning of the Constitution, including Section 3.
However, in an concurring opinion to the 2014 Supreme Court case National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning and a short private letter explain the opinion, (conservative) Justice Antonin Scalia believed that the president was, indeed, an “officer of the United States” for constitutional purposes.
Neil Gorsuch's 2012 opinion from 10th Circuit Court of Appeals
case Hassan v. The State of Colorado
(No. 12-1190, D.C. No. 1:11-CV-03116-MJW)
"Abdul Karim Hassan is a naturalized citizen who wishes to run for the Presidency of the United States. After the Colorado Secretary of State informed him that his ineligibility for office precluded his placement on the ballot, Mr. Hassan brought this lawsuit asserting that the natural-born-citizen requirement, and its enforcement through state law barring his access to the ballot, violates the Citizenship, Privileges and Immunities, and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment."
... "[A] state’s legitimate interest in protecting the integrity and practical functioning of the political process permits it to exclude from the ballot candidates who are constitutionally prohibited from assuming office."
Can Donald Trump still run for president after Maine and Colorado rulings?
The rulings in Colorado and Maine effect the presidential election in those 2 specific states. However, the decision has been "stayed" to allow for the Supreme Court to take up the case.
Each of the other 48 states would need to determine whether the "Exclusion Clause" would apply to that State's Constitution or related document.
Determination about whether the conclusions reached by Colorado and Maine should remain in place; should be reversed; or should be applied to all 50 states would need to come from the United States Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has agreed to review the case.
The Fourteenth Amendment Wasn’t a Creative Writing Exercise
"The Fourteenth Amendment, ... , was written in response to two specific events: not just the Civil War, but also the First Insurrection, which took place from December 1860 through January 1861, before the outbreak of the Civil War." The First Insurrection was undertaken by "John B. Floyd, a slave owner from Virginia, and President James Buchanan’s secretary of war".
"The Fourteenth Amendment wasn’t a creative writing exercise. It was drafted carefully in response to specific concerns about actions that real men had taken in the real world, just a few years prior."
"John B. Floyd was one of those men, and his actions map remarkably well onto Donald Trump’s actions during the period between November 2020 and January 2021."
Source:
The Bulwark Plus
By: Jonathan V. Last; Jan 31, 2024
https://plus.thebulwark.com/p/the-14th-amendment-wasnt-a-creative
Can Donald Trump still run for president after Maine and Colorado rulings?
The simple answer is: "Yes. These rulings only apply to Colorado and Maine respectively."
Source:
BBC News online
By Tom Geoghegan; 5th January 2024, 06:20 EST
The Constitution Prohibits Trump from Ever Being President Again
The Atlantic
By J. Michael Luttig and Laurence H. Tribe; August 19, 2023
Two United States Constitution scholars, J. Michael Luttig and Laurence H. Tribe, describe why they both believe that came to the conclusion that Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment contains within it a protection against the dissolution of the republic by a treasonous president. Section 3, automatically excludes from future office and position of power in the United States government—and also from any equivalent office and position of power in the sovereign states and their subdivisions—any person who has taken an oath to support and defend our Constitution and thereafter rebels against that sacred charter, either through overt insurrection or by giving aid or comfort to the Constitution’s enemies.
About the Authors:
Michael Luttig is a former federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
Laurence H. Tribe is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor of Constitutional Law Emeritus at Harvard University.
Colorado brief shows why Trump should be off the ballot in 2024
By Jordan Rubin; Nov. 22, 2023, 11:25 AM EST
Former federal judge J. Michael Luttig called the voters' appeal the "most compelling brief on a question of ... constitutional law that I have ever read."
Donald Trump won't be on the ballot in Colorado if the state’s Supreme Court — and then the U.S. Supreme Court — heeds the simple yet powerful observation that insurrectionists can’t be president.
Among the arguments in their brief Monday to the state’s high court, lawyers for challengers to Trump’s eligibility made what they called the “common sense” point that “there would be no reason to allow Presidents who lead an insurrection to serve again while preventing low-level government workers who act as foot soldiers from doing so.”
Trump ‘engaged in an insurrection,’ judge says, but should remain on Colorado ballot
By Marshall Cohen, CNN; Updated 10:35 PM EST, Fri November 17, 2023
https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/17/politics/trump-colorado-ballot-14th-amendment-insurrection/index.html
A Colorado judge has ruled that former President Donald Trump “engaged in an insurrection” on January 6, 2021, but rejected an attempt to remove him from the state’s 2024 primary ballot, finding that the 14th Amendment’s “insurrectionist ban” doesn’t apply to presidents.
Colorado District Judge Sarah Wallace concluded that “Trump engaged in an insurrection on January 6, 2021, through incitement, and that the First Amendment does not protect Trump’s speech” at the Ellipse that day. She also found that Trump “acted with the specific intent to disrupt the Electoral College certification of President Biden’s electoral victory through unlawful means.”