So much so, in fact, that a Barack Obama-appointed judge swiftly dismissed a lawsuit from a group arguing the former president shouldn’t be able to appear on the Florida primary ballot because of the events of Jan. 6, 2021.
According to the Palm Beach Post, Judge Robin Rosenberg didn’t rule on whether the 14th Amendment could apply to Trump’s 2024 candidacy.
“Instead, Rosenberg ruled that the plaintiffs, Boynton Beach attorney Lawrence Caplan and two others, lacked ‘standing’ to bring the challenge,” the outlet reported.
“Plaintiffs lack standing to challenge Defendant’s qualifications for seeking the Presidency,” the ruling read.
Instead, she said, “the injuries alleged” from the events of Jan. 6, 2021, “are not cognizable and not particular to them” and that “an individual citizen does not have standing to challenge whether another individual is qualified to hold public office.”
In the ruling, the judge also cited prior precedent, in which plaintiffs weren’t able to keep candidates off the ballot because of their association with Jan. 6.
Palm Beach-based attorney Lawrence Caplan — who filed the lawsuit, along with two other individuals — didn’t comment after the ruling, although he had previously said that standing might be the biggest hurdle his lawsuit would face. Nevertheless, he had previously claimed the Constitution prohibited Trump from running again.
“The 14th Amendment is very clear that you do not need a conviction. You need to be accused and obviously there has to be a rationale for the accusation,” Caplan said. “I read the amendment and I read the facts of the indictment, and they match very closely.”
The theory that the 14th Amendment provides a legal remedy to keep certain candidates who wished to challenge the results of the 2020 election off the ballot isn’t a new one. It’s also one that hasn’t gotten very far in court.
The amendment, ratified in the wake of the Civil War, states: “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”
The intent was, quite obviously, to bar previously elected officials who supported the Confederacy from running for high office unless Congress, by a two-thirds vote, reinstated their ability to do so.
However, various liberal activists, who are fond of referring to the events of Jan. 6 as an “insurrection,” have tried to use the provision to get various Republicans disqualified from appearing on the ballot. So far, not a single one has been successful.
The most vigorous push was arguably against former GOP Rep. Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, who spoke at Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally prior to the Capitol incursion.
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A judge ruled in 2022 that the state’s candidate challenge process didn’t apply to the relevant portion of the amendment and a review of Cawthorn’s eligibility by the State Board of Elections would not go forward. (Cawthorn, who faced a myriad of other character questions that had nothing to do with the events of Jan. 6, lost his primary in a deep-red district.)
A similar 14th Amendment disqualification legal push came against GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, although a judge also struck that down. Greene would go on to win both the party primary and general election by wide margins.
However, the granddaddy of all legal pushes — that against former President Donald Trump — is of a different nature for several reasons, most notably the scope of the effort and the indictments against him.
In addition to the Florida lawsuit, the office of the New Hampshire attorney general announced it was “carefully reviewing” 14th Amendment arguments to keep Trump off the ballot late last month.
“Not being a lawyer and not wanting to make a decision in a vacuum, I will be soliciting some legal opinions on what is appropriate or not before I make any decision,” said New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan, a Republican of the very equivocal variety, in an interview published Aug. 25.
Earlier in the summer, two activist groups also announced they had launched a legal effort to keep Trump off the ballot in five states: California, Colorado, Georgia, Oregon and Nevada. While only two of those states are likely in play for Trump in 2024 — Georgia and Nevada — keeping him on the sidelines there could affect down-ballot races in all five.
And here’s where the erroneous and capricious misapplication of the 14th Amendment could sway more indulgent judges: Unlike Cawthorn or Greene, Trump faces two indictments related to Jan. 6, one federal and one in the state of Georgia.
As Human Events editor and conservative activist Jack Posobiec predicted in July, these indictments were going to be a pretext for liberal activists to finally try and make the 14th Amendment argument stick:Will it work? If this was any indication, no: The lawsuit in Florida was dismissed for lack of standing just one week after it was filed. And while prospective litigants can try to judge-shop all they want, the fact remains that if an Obama-appointed judge took less than a week to boot this one out of court, chances that activist groups can claim standing and have it stick are slim.
This said, candidates themselves might have a better chance of succeeding. It’d be difficult to see any of the GOP front-runners trying it, considering that even hinting it was an option would be instant death.
The Biden White House, on the other hand, doesn’t have to worry as much about the wrath of conservative voters, and they may just be desperate enough to seize upon the strategy if things don’t start looking up for Uncle Joe and Cackling Kamala. One can only hope judges are as indulgent with them as they were with the Florida litigants — which is to say, not very.
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