The Minnesota Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected an attempt to block Donald Trump from the state’s GOP primary ballot next year based on the 14th Amendment’s “insurrection clause” but said the challengers can try again to block from the general election ballot if the former president wins the Republican nomination.
The 14th Amendment, ratified after the Civil War, says US officials who take an oath to uphold the Constitution are banned from future office if they “engaged in insurrection.” But the Constitution doesn’t say how to enforce the ban, and it has only been applied twice since 1919, which is why many experts view these challenges as a long shot.
At oral arguments earlier this month, several of the justices appeared skeptical of removing Trump from the ballot. One justice said it might be prudent to exercise “judicial restraint,” while another nodded to the idea that the voters should probably be the ones who decide whether Trump returns to the presidency.
Similar anti-Trump challenges are still ongoing in Colorado and Michigan. The cases have been handled by left-leaning advocacy groups, but a bipartisan array of legal scholars and former jurists have endorsed their attempts to disqualify Trump from office.
Regardless of the initial rulings in these cases, most experts anticipate appeals that go all the way to the US Supreme Court, which could settle the issue for the entire nation.
This story is breaking and will be updated.
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