SAINT PAUL, Minn. (CN) — A group of Minnesota voters led by a former state Supreme Court justice and secretary of state filed a petition Tuesday seeking to exclude Donald Trump from the ballot in next year’s elections, arguing that the former president’s connection to the Capitol riots of Jan. 6, 2021 disqualify him from holding office.
Former Minnesota Secretary of State Joan Growe and former Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Paul Anderson headlined the group of voters, whose petition to the Minnesota Supreme Court argued that Jan. 6 rioters’ storming of the U.S. Capitol was an “insurrection” and that Trump’s encouragement of rioters on social media was a breach of his oath to uphold and defend the Constitution.
“Donald J. Trump, through his words and actions, after swearing an oath as an officer of the United States to support the Constitution, engaged in insurrection or rebellion, or gave aid and comfort to its enemies, as defined by Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment,” the group says in their petition. “He is disqualified from holding the presidency or any other office under the United States unless and until Congress provides him relief.”
The petition is the first formal challenge to Trump’s candidacy filed by the nonprofit Free Speech for People, and employs a widely discussed legal theory which holds that the U.S. Constitution forbids former office holders who participate in “insurrection or rebellion” from holding office again. A different group filed a similar suit in Colorado late last week.
Free Speech for People has also challenged the eligibility of U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, then-U.S. Representative Madison Cawthorn and a handful of other politicians who they say supported or were involved in the storming of the U.S. Capitol after Trump’s 2020 election loss, though its highest-profile victory so far has been the disqualification of former Otero County, New Mexico, Commissioner and Cowboys for Trump founder Couy Griffin from holding office under the clause.
The theory, which gained national prominence after the publication of a paper by University of Chicago law professor William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen, of Minnesota’s own University of St. Thomas School of Law, this month. Baude and Paulsen, both Federalist Society members, argued in their paper that Section 3 of the Constitution’s Civil War-era 14th Amendment, which bars former government officeholders who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the United States or “given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof,” was not effectively repealed by post-Civil War amnesty legislation and should be considered disqualifying for Trump and others involved in attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
While criminal charges are still pending against Trump for alleged efforts to overturn his electoral defeat and the Senate declined to impeach Trump for his conduct, the petitioners argued that “modern authority agrees that no evidence or authority suggests that a prior criminal conviction… was ever considered necessary to trigger Section 3.” They pointed out that most of the ex-Confederate House and Senate candidates that were excluded from holding office during Reconstruction had never been charged with any crimes.
Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon is named as a respondent to the petition. His office issued a brief statement Tuesday, acknowledging awareness of the suit but otherwise saying only that “for the sake of Minnesota’s voters, we hope the court resolves this issue to allow for the orderly administration of the elections in 2024.” Simon has previously gone on record to say that Minnesota has no authority to determine Trump’s eligibility, and that he expects the question to reach the U.S. Supreme Court sooner rather than later.
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