The 14th Amendment was tailor-made for an insurrectionist 'horror' like Jan. 6: legal expert

12 January 2024

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review a matter that state governments, from Colorado to Maine to Michigan, have been grappling with: whether or not former President Donald Trump should be disqualified from state ballots under Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment.

According to Section 3, an "officer" who has engaged in "insurrection" is ineligible for certain positions.

The Colorado Supreme Court and Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows have determined that Trump should be excluded from their state presidential ballots because of the January 6, 2021 insurrection and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. But California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, a Democrat, and the Michigan Supreme Court, on the other hand, have decided to keep Trump on their ballots.

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In an article published by The Atlantic on January 12, legal expert Quinta Jurecic agrees with the Colorado decision and describes the "horror" of January 6, 2021 as a textbook example of the type of thing the 14th Amendment is designed to safeguard against.

Jurecic explains, "Many commentators have argued that the nine justices should overturn the Colorado Supreme Court's decision barring Trump's candidacy for reasons of prudence alone…. But these arguments ignore that keeping Trump on the ballot is also a choice — one forced by Trump's own actions — and that just as there are risks to barring him, there are also risks to disregarding the clear command of the 14th Amendment. The section of the Amendment at issue — Section 3 — sets certain conduct outside the bounds of what's acceptable for public officials in a democratic society."

The 14th Amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution in 1868 following the U.S. Civil War. And Jurecic stresses that it's important to understand why Section 3 was included.

"Congress made that determination not on a whim, but in the years following a bloody conflict that killed hundreds of thousands of Americans and demonstrated just how serious the implications of violating that boundary can be," Jurecic explains. "As a brutal effort to unlawfully derail the peaceful transfer of power, January 6 falls well within the range of conduct forbidden by Section 3. What message would the Supreme Court send if it closed its eyes to that prohibition—especially in the months before yet another presidential election with the threat of violence hanging over it?"

The legal expert continues, "Hiding beneath the surface of many of the arguments against disqualifying Trump is the sneaky suggestion that January 6 wasn't all that bad — unpleasant, perhaps, but nothing worthy of being called an insurrection. This ignores both the horror of that day and the risk posed by a presidential candidate who continues to insist that he won in 2020, refuses to say that he will accept the results of the 2024 election, and routinely eggs his supporters on to further violence. The 14th Amendment establishes that such conduct is unacceptable for a potential president, and it is in the interests of American democracy — unless you define democracy as mob rule — to reaffirm that determination. If the Court balks at this, then Trump will once again take away the message that he can act with impunity."

Quinta Jurecic's full analysis for The Atlantic is available at this link (subscription required).

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