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The 14th Amendment to the Constitution bans anyone who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against” the U.S. from holding office.
A Florida lawyer is suing Donald Trump in an attempt to disqualify his current run for president. Lawrence A. Caplan’s Thursday lawsuit claims that the ex-president’s involvement in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot would make him ineligible to run again, thanks to the Constitution’s 14th Amendment—a Civil War-era addition aimed at preventing those who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against” the U.S. from holding office. “Now given that the facts seem to be crystal clear that Trump was involved to some extent in the insurrection that took place on January 6th, the sole remaining question is whether American jurists who swear an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution upon their entry to the bench, will choose to follow the letter of the Constitution in this case,” the lawsuit says, also citing Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia. Legal experts say it’s an uphill battle to argue in court, since the amendment has hardly been exercised in modern history. “Realistically, it’s not a Hail Mary, but it’s just tossing the ball up and hoping it lands in the right place,” Charles Zelden, a professor of history and legal studies at Nova Southeastern University, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
archive link to South Florida Sun Sentinel article: https://archive.ph/1BntD
This is going to get rejected pretty fast. Even if true, he doesn’t have the standing in court.
I will admit I find standing baffling because often, when you think someone has standing, they don’t or vice versa.
The Supreme Court, under these lunatic Republicans, have shown that standing is whatever they want it to be.
However, there are election officials in every state, and perhaps every county, that determine which candidates are qualified to appear on a ballot. Each of them has not just the right, but the DUTY to disqualify Trump for his role in the insurrection.
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Standing could be as simple as “it harms the American people to allow him to run.” The lawyer doesn’t have to be directly injured, since class action lawsuits are brought on behalf of entire groups all the time.
Not that it’s a slam dunk reason, but I would hope and think the lawyer in question knows that they have to prove some amount of standing.
No comment on this lawyer’s standing, but class action suit’s standing, claim that the class members have been injured in the same or similar ways as the lead plaintiff. The lead plaintiff is suing for a direct injury.
Just to be clear, I am not a lawyer. I just find standing is not always what it seems.
Just by reading other court cases of similar types, they often say they don’t have standing and congress or someone else would have to sue. To me it’s a BS answer when they want to avoid a case.
ETA: I am still shocked you can be a felon and still run for and be president. That is something new I learned.
Yep. Basically the 14th is the quickest path to disallowing his run. But he can get multiple life sentences for murdering a million people and still run.
Many of our laws are based on people being at bare minimum reasonable. Election laws especially are written so that the electorate can decide.
Should a federal conviction for having marijuana plants prevent someone from running for office? Or should the citizens be able to make that decision when voting?
The problem is that because many of our laws lack specificity some modern assholes are attempting to use those loopholes and trying to politicize absolutely everything. Combined with the fact that many people no longer have the time to properly research things on their own (assuming they even have proper critical thinking education now), a decent segment of the population no longer is getting unbiased or minimally biased factual information from “news” sources due to the repeal of laws requiring that over the decades.
I always thought elected officials could not be felons. Why I found that shocking. That is something I remember from high school but obviously, I remembered it incorrectly.
I would think anyone who is an American citizen has standing to do this. The overturning of a fair election and the destruction of the peaceful transfer of power has horrible consequences for us all.
It’s not the simple. Maybe a lawyer can stop by and explain it.
The recent cases about student loans is a perfect example. Many were overturned over standing.
I get the basics of standing but the way the courts use it often leaves me confused since they take a very narrow stance.
I’m not a lawyer (yet) as I haven’t taken the bar exam, but I remember learning this in law school.
I can’t find the original court filing that all these news articles are reporting, but presumably, this is a special kind of suit seeking a “declaratory judgment” - a suit asking the court to prevent a harm before it happens.
Cornell Law School discusses it in a somewhat lengthy read but put “simply”, for standing in this kind of case, the court would want to see:
a concrete controversy (as opposed to a hypothetical one, e.g. you can’t seek a declaratory judgment “in case my neighbor decides to hit me”),
between adverse parties (some random citizen can’t sue you for breaking a promise you made to your grandma),
that is ripe (where enough has already happened that a decision right now wouldn’t require much speculation),
not moot (has to be able to affect the current case, for example, declaratory judgment isn’t appropriate to determine “should he have done that?”), and
the court’s decision is needed to prevent imminent harm (has to be relatively certain that a party would be adversely affected if the court doesn’t prevent it from happening).
Here there could be issues of ripeness: the court might not want to act on the mere possibility that Trump will be found guilty of insurrection etc. Courts don’t like to tell people what they can and can’t do unless a real situation makes it necessary, otherwise the court would risk encroaching on powers that belong to the other branches of government.
Good break down and thank you. This is the interaction I like.
Thank you for bringing rigour and structure to the discussion as opposed to sheer speculation. Take my upvote pretty please.
That case is also an example of this working. The case in front of the Supreme Court had no standing since is was fake plaintiffs.
That was a different case. That was about a web developer not wanting to do gay marriage websites or some crap. The plaintiff was fake but the courts still ruled on it which I found confusing.
The Supreme Court doesn’t think separation of church and state is worth preserving and will do every it can to dismantle it. That is why we are getting state funded religious schools and prayer is creeping back in.
I am an atheist and I don’t mind state funding private schools through vouchers. I can’t speak for all religious schools but when I was growing up, those were the most highly rated schools. We need to fix our schools and competition is a good thing. The other option is we ban all private schools. I can’t remember which country did that and they had good results but they do find religious schools the same.
You do understand the voucher thing is an attempt to remove funding from public education right ?
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You may be right, I am not a lawyer either, but regardless, I would be very hesitant to accept anything said about it here. Let’s just say that the “Lemmy Bar Association” doesn’t exactly have a great record with legal analysis.
Oh god no I would never just accept anything I read here about Trump and the law. The bias of this place is insane. They want to pretend there is a magical situation where Trump will be denied the chance to run and put in prison. Most legal experts have said he’s no not going to prison and this whole 14th amendment talk is distracting.
I just want Trump to drop out and go away. He won’t because he’s an attention vampire.
the supreme court doesn’t seem to care about standing anymore. they literally rewrote the rules to toss student loan forgiveness.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-06-30/supreme-court-student-loans-forgiveness-biden-heroes-act
Standing doesn’t seem to be a thing anymore. In the same year we had an atheist being told that they couldn’t get upset about prayers to Jesus in a government meeting of his town that was open to the public and that a website design company can refuse to be involved in a gay marriage despite having no gay clients.
On one side we have someone upset about an government eastablishment of a church in their local government on the other we have a hypothetical.
Who do you think would have standing?
Fuck if I know. I think the courts will avoid this like the plague and say congress has to do something. Most of their recent rulings have been that. Roe Vs Wade was basically released stating the courts should have never created law and this is an act of congress. That is paraphrasing it. Same with student loan debt. Basically it was not the right of the president but congress. While those may be technically true, congress just sits with their thumbs up their ass. I would like to see a bill to make abortion legal at a federal level and yet, nothing.
The reason that there isn’t a national law that codified Row v Wade is REPUBLICAN OBSTRUCTION.
The system is set up to make it extremely difficult to pass anything, and the Republican party has enforced mandatory party unity on abortion and gun rights for the last four decades.
The Democrats have not even tried to propose one in the last 50 years. So while it’s easy to blame the Republicans (and they do deserve heavy criticism here), the Democrats have done nothing as well. It is interesting to note, Rudy was a liberal Republican when he was mayor. That means he was pro-choice. I can’t think of a single Republican who is currently pro-choice openly. Even Rudy backed off the claim, not that his opinion matters anymore but just as a reference.
I don’t think it will even get as far as standing.
The difference between Trump and the other guy removed from office because of 1/6:
https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/judge-removes-local-official-engaging-jan-insurrection/story?id=89463597
Is that that guy had actually been convicted. Hasn’t happened for Trump… yet.
My expectation would be that because Trump’s case has not yet been adjudicated, he still has the premise of innocent until proven guilty, and until such time, he’s still qualified.
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Well according to the theory of the case the 14th amendment is self-executing, so it doesn’t require that Trump be convicted. It remains to be seen how well that stands up in court however.
The trick is the language of the 14th:
Forbids anyone from holding office who “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”
What does “shall have engaged” mean? Who decides if they actually engaged or not? This is why we need a court decision, as we had in the other guy who was removed. He was convicted of conspiring to overthrow the government, he got removed from office.
Trump and his ilk are going to argue that they were the legitimate rulers, that the rebellion was AGAINST THEM. That’s why we can’t just kick them out without a ruling.