What you need to know about the efforts to remove Trump from the 2024 ballot

The campaign to have former President Donald J. Trump removed from the ballot over his efforts to cling to power after the 2020 election has kicked into high gear, with decisions in two states, Maine and Colorado, barring him from the primaries.

Challenges are still ongoing in many more states, based on an obscure clause of a constitutional amendment enacted after the Civil War that disqualifies government officials “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” from holding office.

Over the years, the courts and Congress have done little to clarify how that criterion should apply, adding urgency to the call for the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on the politically explosive dispute over Trump’s eligibility before the upcoming election became.

Here’s what you need to know about the challenges.

Which states have already decided the case?

Maine’s secretary of state said Thursday that Trump was ineligible to run in the Republican primary there because of his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. She agreed with a handful of citizens who claimed he had incited an insurrection and therefore should not be allowed to run for president again under Article 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

In a written decision, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, said that while no one in her position had ever barred a candidate from the ballot under Section 3 of the amendment, “no presidential candidate has ever before been involved in an insurrection .” .”

Last week, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled in a 4-3 ruling that the former president could not appear on the primary ballot there because he engaged in insurrection. The ruling did not relate to the general election.

The judges in Colorado said that if their ruling were appealed to the US Supreme Court, Mr Trump would be allowed to remain on the ballot until the Supreme Court decided the case. Colorado’s secretary of state has said she will follow the order in effect on Jan. 5, when the state must certify ballots for the election.

On Wednesday, the Republican Party of Colorado said it had asked the Supreme Court to hear an appeal of the Colorado decision.

In Michigan and Minnesota, courts have ruled that election officials cannot prevent the Republican Party from including Mr. Trump in their primary ballots. But both decisions left the door open for new challenges to keep him out of the general election.

Where else are there challenges to Donald Trump’s appearance on the ballot?

Lawsuits have been filed in about thirty states to remove Mr. Trump from the ballot, but many have been dismissed; According to the US State Department, lawsuits are underway in 14 states a database maintained by Lawfarea website on legal and national security issues.

Those states are: Alaska, Arizona, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming. (A judge dismissed the lawsuit in Arizona, but the dismissal is being appealed.)

What are the challenges about?

At the heart of the disqualification effort is the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which was adopted in 1868 and includes a section disqualifying former government officials who betrayed their oath by engaging in “insurrection or rebellion.” The provision, Section 3, was intended to prohibit Confederate officials from serving in the U.S. government.

The provision specifically says that anyone who has served as an “officer of the United States,” taken an oath to support the Constitution, and subsequently “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” may not hold any government office. It includes a provision that Congress can waive the ban with a two-thirds majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate.

With legal challenges mounting, the U.S. Supreme Court is widely expected to take up the issue, and experts say the scope of the decision will determine whether the challenges are resolved quickly or drag on for months.

Ashraf Ahmed, a professor at Columbia Law School who studies election law, said that if the Supreme Court were to hear the case, it could avoid delving into the toughest issues, such as defining Section 3. Instead, he said, the judges could make a largely ruling. on procedural grounds.

Which states could be next to decide the issue?

A decision is expected soon in Oregon, where the same group that filed the lawsuit in Michigan, Free Speech for People, is trying to have the state Supreme Court remove Trump from the primary ballot there. In that case the State Secretary has asked the court to expedite the hearing of the case because it must complete primary voting by March 21.

In California, the state’s top election official is expected to announce soon whether Mr. Trump will remain among the candidates certified for the March 5 primary there.

John C. Bonifaz, the chairman of Free Speech for People, said the group plans to take on new challenges in other states soon, although he declined to share which states.

Free Speech for People has also directly asked top election officials in all fifty states, as well as Washington DC, to remove Mr Trump from the ballots in those states.