The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from a former New Mexico county commissioner who was kicked out of office over his participation in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Former Otero County commissioner Couy Griffin, a cowboy pastor who rode to national political fame by embracing then-President Donald Trump with a series of horseback caravans, is the only elected official thus far to be banned from office in connection with the Capitol attack, which disrupted Congress as it was trying to certify Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory over Trump.
At a 2022 trial in state district court, Griffin received the first disqualification from office in over a century under a provision of the 14th Amendment written to prevent former Confederates from serving in government after the Civil War.
Though the Supreme Court ruled this month that states don’t have the ability to bar Trump or other candidates for federal offices from the ballot, the justices said different rules apply to state and local candidates.
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When it’s worded this way I can almost accept the decision made by the SCOTUS. Almost.
The problem is that the amendment doesn’t say “But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, enact such disability.”, it says “…remove such disability”. It doesn’t make plain English sense that congress should have to take a positive action to make this happen and also remove it.
Scary how simple that concept is, and how the supreme court completely ignored it.
5/9 of the Court ignored it
No, 9/9 of the court ignored it. Otherwise, the 4/9 would’ve written a dissent, not a concurrence. It’s a disgrace.
They’re all in cahoots, fellas.
The decision is garbage. States already have the right to disqualify presidents for other constraints: age, natural citizenship at birth, residency in the US.
More to the point, states don’t even have an obligation to qualify anyone for a primary because they have no obligation to hold one in the first place! As far as the US Constitution is concerned, state legislatures could simply appoint electors if they wanted, and the only reason states hold popular votes to begin with is because of their own state laws imposing requirements on themselves.
Except their decision was against the state level attempt to keep him off the primary ballot. Feds shouldn’t have jurisdiction over a state level organisation.
Especially since it was only a state-level decision to hold a primary at all, since the state legislature could simply appoint Electors and that would be enough to satisfy the US Constitutional requirements.
Something I’m not sure is talked about enough that is a consequence of that decision is they also removed enforcement of the 14th from the judicial branch, for no reason. The question was narrow: “Can States do this?” The ruling was: “No, they can’t, only Congress.” A better ruling (barring, “yes they can”) would have been: “No, they can’t.” Which would leave room for a convicted insurrectionist to be barred by the courts by said conviction.
Based on the actual decision Trump could lose the insurrection trial in DC and still be President because the Supreme Court just removed their ability to say otherwise. For no reason other than to protect Trump as far as I can tell. They’re not so stupid they’d remove power on accident, not to mention the more liberal justices and Barrett point this problem out explicitly in their concurrence.
All of this is moot because none of these federal cases will be decided by the election. The SCOTUS taking up Trump’s obnoxious immunity argument instead of saying the appeals court got it right already guaranteed that.
Frankly, the fact that the liberal justices wrote a concurrence rather than a dissent is the most disgraceful part of all (except for all the other parts, including the fact that justices can be categorized into “liberal” and “conservative” in the first place).
It will be beautiful irony if Congress declines to certify Trump’s election come Jan 6, 2025.
But let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.
It is very difficult to imagine a scenario where that would happen because liberals have a long-standing tradition of appeasing fascists. If Trump legitimately won the EC vote, enough liberal Democrats would go along with it to certify the vote (excusing it as the “will of the people” or some bullshit like that), 14th be damned.
Not to mention the constitutional confusion. Declining the winner of the EC would either leave the country without a President, where maybe duties fall to the Speaker of the House, or let the House pick someone. Does the US even have a mechanism for calling an early election to get a replacement vote?
Still, I expect pundits to bring it up as a mechanism to satisfy SCOTUS. They have a lot of air time and blog space to fill before the election (nevermind the inauguration), and baiting the MAGA crowd with a Democratic Jan 6 insurrection will certainly drive engagement.
Nope the remedy is Congress voting in their state caucuses.
Not just that. They said Congress would need to act after the election. Because it’s not a ban on running for office.
They really fucked us good.