Trump Candidacy Challenge Likelier After Insurrection Law Ruling

A key circuit court decision involving the federal law that bans insurrectionists from holding office has emboldened plans by advocates to challenge Donald Trump’s candidacy if he runs for president in 2024.

“The precedent is now there,” Ron Fein, legal director for the advocacy group Free Speech for People, said Friday.

On Thursday, a three-judge panel in the 11th Circuit ruled that a challenge to the law by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) was moot because she had already prevailed in state court over Free Speech for People’s bid to block her re-election.

The group had argued the insurrectionist ban enacted under the 14th Amendment after the Civil War should apply to Greene because they said she encouraged and supported the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Greene’s attorneys wanted the federal court to protect her from similar action in the future. But the circuit court didn’t go down that path. And in not doing so, it left the door open to future challenges to others who could be seen as having Jan. 6 connections, including the former president.

“If Trump chooses to run for office in 2024, we at Free Speech for People have publicly committed that we will file challenges against him in multiple states using these types of candidacy-challenge procedures,” Fein said. “Attempts to go to federal court to block them are not going to succeed, not in the long run.”

No Legal Bar

James Bopp Jr., an attorney representing Greene, disagreed about the impact of the ruling.

“When a case is moot, it means the court is not deciding anything. So you can’t derive anything good or bad from them refusing to decide a case,” Bopp said.

He also said that because the case wasn’t decided on merits, it wouldn’t bar future legal challenges.

The provision, in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, doesn’t require a criminal conviction, and it has seldom been used, the Congressional Research Service said in a report. “The few times it has been used in the past mainly arose out of the Civil War—a very different context from the events of January 6,” according to the report.

In September, a state judge in New Mexico used the insurrectionist clause to oust a county commissioner who had participated in the Jan. 6 riot. But attempts to use the same provision against Greene and Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) have failed.

Trump said Thursday that he will “very, very, very probably” run for president again.