Last week, a federal judge in Florida dismissed a lawsuit trying to keep Donald Trump off the 2024 presidential ballot under the 14th Amendment, which bars insurrectionists from office. As voters, the plaintiffs didn’t have legal standing to bring the challenge in federal court, so dismissal wasn’t a surprising outcome.
But as I noted in explaining why the federal judge rejected that case, a lawsuit brought by voters in state courts could be different.
And now we have such a case filed in Colorado state court, brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW. The plaintiffs are six Republican and unaffiliated voters who, according to their filing, want to protect the rights of voters “to fully participate in the upcoming primary election by ensuring that votes cast will be for those constitutionally qualified to hold office.”
The lengthy filing is worth reading for its recap of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and how they fit into the claim that his actions have disqualified him from office. The 14th Amendment’s disqualification clause bars from office those who have sworn to uphold the Constitution but then have “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against” the United States or “given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”
And while we don’t know how the courts will answer the disqualification question for Trump, this latest suit is better poised to get the courts to answer it. And while we don’t know how the courts will answer the disqualification question for Trump, this latest suit is better poised to get the courts to answer it. As we’ve seen, having legal standing is no small thing — indeed, it’s crucial. Though, to be sure, it’s merely a necessary component of a case. Just because a plaintiff has standing doesn’t mean they’ll automatically prevail. Rather, it lets them find out if they can. Now, to make things more complicated already, Trump wants to remove this Colorado state case to federal court. If removal sounds familiar, that’s probably because it’s a pending matter in Trump’s Georgia prosecution (which, by the way, the Colorado civil suit cites in its recitation of Trump’s election subversion efforts). How big of a complication the federal removal bid poses remains to be seen, and we will likely learn more about that in short order. In the meantime, this lawsuit poses a bigger threat to Trump’s candidacy than the recently dismissed case in federal court, and it will be worth watching.
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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