The Minnesota Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected a petition trying to keep Donald Trump off the primary ballot, but it didn’t decide yet whether a general election challenge might succeed.
The case is one of a number of legal challenges proceeding around the country against Trump’s 2024 presidential eligibility, with voters invoking the 14th Amendment’s insurrectionist ban.
Whether it’s in this Minnesota case or one that’s pending in Colorado or elsewhere, the issue may ultimately be resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court one way or the other.
There’s no state law prohibiting “placing on the presidential nomination primary ballot, or sending delegates to the national convention supporting, a candidate who is ineligible to hold office,” the Minnesota court said in an order Wednesday. But the court also said the question of Trump’s general election eligibility isn’t “ripe” yet, so it dismissed the petition “without prejudice” regarding the general election, meaning the challengers can try again in 2024.
So even though it’s a loss for the challengers, at least for now, the court’s order on Wednesday doesn’t help to decide the substance of the question of Trump’s eligibility under the 14th Amendment. That will likely have to come in a future decision, whether in Minnesota or elsewhere, and then eventually be resolved in the U.S. Supreme Court. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal newsletter for weekly updates on the top legal stories, including news from the Supreme Court, the Donald Trump cases and more.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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