The court began considering the case of Trump’s disqualification from the presidential election

Voice of America reports, citing the AP, that the case over whether to bar former US President Donald Trump from running for the White House again based on the US Constitution’s “insurrection” clause entered a new phase on Monday when hearings began in the first two state-level lawsuits.

The cases could later end up in the U.S. Supreme Court.

A week of hearings in one lawsuit to bar Trump from running has begun in Colorado, and a hearing is scheduled for Thursday in the Minnesota Supreme Court in an attempt to throw out the Republican former president from that state’s vote.

Background

Regardless of whether Judge Trump is allowed to run or barred, their decisions are likely to be quickly appealed and could eventually reach the US Supreme Court.

The nation’s highest court has never ruled on the Civil War-era provisions of the 14th Amendment. The amendment prohibits from holding high office those who swore an oath to uphold the Constitution and then took part in rebellion against it.

“We used to have lawsuits about the possibility of running for this or that presidential candidate – Barack Obama, Ted Cruz, John McCain,” Derek Mueller, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, told Voice of America, listing the candidates against whom lawsuits were filed. that they may not meet the constitutional requirement to be a “citizen at birth.”

But these cases, Mueller added, differ from the use of the Constitution’s vague inflammatory clause prohibiting insurrection. Even if they are distant, they have a plausible path to success and raise important questions, Mueller said.

Dozens of cases have been filed in recent months citing Chapter 3 of the 14th Amendment, but the cases in Colorado and Minnesota are the most influential because they were brought by two liberal groups with significant legal resources, according to legal experts. These states also have clear and quick procedures for appealing applicants’ qualifications.

That means the cases in Colorado and Minnesota have a more legally defensible path to forcing courts to force election officials to disqualify Trump, as opposed to other lawsuits seeking a full ruling from federal judges that Trump is no longer eligible to be president.

The plaintiffs in the cases argue that the issue is simple: Trump’s attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat, which resulted in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, disqualify him from election as clearly as if he had not been a citizen by birth, which is another one constitutional condition to run for president.

Four years after swearing in an oath to defend the Constitution as president of the United States, Trump attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 election, leading to a violent insurrection at the United States Capitol, to stop the lawful transfer of power to his successor, according to a Colorado lawsuit filed on behalf of Republicans and non-partisans. voters by the liberal group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

The authors believe that by provoking this unprecedented attack on the American constitutional order, Trump violated his oath of office and disqualified himself from holding public office, including the Office of the President, under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Trump denounced the lawsuits as “election interference.” His lawyers argue that these provisions of the Constitution are complex and have not been applied in 150 years.

The Trump campaign said it had filed a motion to recuse the judge in the Sarah B. Wallace case because she made a $100 donation to the liberal group Colorado Turnout Project in October 2022. She was appointed to the position in August of that year by Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat.

Wallace denied the motion, saying she had no recollection of the donations and had no prejudice on the legal issues in the case.

“I will not allow this trial to become a circus,” she said at the start of the hearing.

The 14th Amendment clause has been used only a few times since the Civil War. Trump’s lawyers argue that this did not apply to the office of the president, which is not mentioned in the text, as opposed to “senator or representative in Congress” and “elector of the president and vice president.”

The provision allows Congress to grant amnesty—as it did in 1872 to allow former Confederates back into government—which has led some to argue that it lacks authority without an act of Congress.

Trump’s lawyers also argue that the former president never “participated in an insurrection” and was simply using his right to free speech to warn about election results that he believed were not legitimate.

Trump’s comments did not approach “incitement,” let alone “participation” in the insurrection, his lawyers wrote in a filing in the Colorado case, adding examples of cases where the provision was not used against those who only rhetorically supported the confederacy.

The arguments in Colorado could include testimony from witnesses to the Jan. 6 attack or other key events in Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. The identities of the witnesses were not released for the hearing to limit incendiary rhetoric and threats that have become a problem in the criminal trials against Trump.

Lawyers are expected to research the history of the 14th Amendment and its use between its passage in 1868 and the amnesty law in 1872.

After the Amnesty Act of 1872, legal scholars were able to find another time this provision was cited when Congress refused to admit a Socialist member to the House of Representatives because he opposed participation in World War I.

In 2022, CREW used it to ban the head of Cowboys for Trump from a county commission in rural New Mexico.

A second liberal group, Free Speech For People, filed lawsuits to block GOP members Marjorie Taylor-Green and Madison Cawthorn from running for re-election.

The judge in Green’s case ruled in his favor, while Cawthorne’s case became moot after he was defeated in a party election.

Free Speech For People brought the case in Minnesota, where appeals in election cases go directly to the state Supreme Court.